A fortnight ago, my wife and I paid a visit to the Royal Surrey Hospital in Guilford to introduce ourselves to the latest grandchild off the production line. Both mother and daughter were in the pink (quite appropriately, given their sex) and visiting the maternity wing of any hospital has never the unsettling, sometimes distressing, atmosphere you sense in other departments. Patients in hospital are ill, some seriously, some at death’s door, but the mood in Maternity was what I would describe as chaotically joyful. There are worse disciplines to work in medicine, I reflected. Of course, there are occasional sad and tragic outcomes, but it must be wholly satisfying to go home at the end of your shift knowing that you have played your part in bringing a new-born infant safely into the world. Thank you, I said to the few nurses within earshot as we left. I am not sure they heard me; everybody was bustling about seeing to the needs of mothers and babies.
But it is not the arrival of Frankie Mila that is the subject of this blog. Before we set off for the hospital, our son rang with a warning to avoid the hospital car park and instead to use the nearby Tesco car park – free, and but a short walk away. Whether, as a member of the medical profession himself, he had insider knowledge of the perils, to say nothing of the expense, of hospital parking he did not say but when we reached the hospital and walked through the enormous – and rammed – hospital car park, we appreciated his heedful advice.
Our second nudge towards outrage was provided by a clearly distressed man – on foot – asking us if we knew where the disabled parking area was located. We couldn’t help him. We had enough trouble trying to navigate the confusing, almost impenetrable, general signage throughout the campus. It was just as well the signs were only two-dimensional; otherwise,we might have been encouraged to disappear up our own backsides in our quest for directions. “Why don’t you just park anywhere here?” I suggested to the agitated man, pointing airily towards an already overflowing car park. “I can’t,” he bewailed, “My wife is immobile.” That brought me up short. Thank heavens I had not muttered something along the lines of….well, mate, you don’t look very disabled to me. And honestly, we could not see – though we tried – any sign of a disabled car park.
The third prompt came as we were leaving, when wewitnessed long queues of flustered and irate car owners struggling with the technology – and the price – of the ticket machines. Many of them were pensioners, who probably didn’t own a mobile phone, or if they did, were not very conversant with the concept of parking apps. Our son-in-law, visiting his son in the very same hospital, who was having his appendix removed, found himself forking out £10 a day for the duration of the boy’s post-operative recuperation. Not to visit his stricken son every day would have been unconscionable; just as well his stay was not long-term . And what about those out-patients, taking up their regular appointments for treatment? It becomes an expensive business being ill or visiting ill relatives. I naively believed that the NHS was free at the first point of contact. It demonstrably is not.
This is a scandal, I said to my wife, an opinion with which she was heartily in agreement. We pay our taxes, which fund theNHS so that we can be cared for when we are ill. To be forced to fork out to attend hospital, either as a patient or a visitor, is morally reprehensible. What’s more, I asserted – I was really on a roll by now – these car parks are not owned by the NHS; they are privately run car parks and as such most, but not all, of the revenues generated end up in the pockets of the company. People are making money out of other people’s illness, and that is truly shocking. Subsequent research revealed to me that some NHS Trusts own their own car parks, and the revenues accrued are ploughed back into the hospital. Possibly less reprehensible but is that still fair? Patients are still being charged, wherever the money is going.Incidentally, in spite of repeated requests under the Freedom of Information Act, the NHS has refused to disclose what proportion of the revenues collected from car parking charges goes to the Trusts and what goes to the private parking management firms. It has been calculated that last year, patients and visitors paid £146 million to park their car. Not having cause myself to visit a hospital for many a year (though that could change at the drop of the hat), I had been unaware at the swelling fury of members of the public who feel they are being taken for a ride, which of course they are not – public transport to and from hospitals is woeful - and if they were, it certainly wouldn’t be free.
I hold no candle for the Scottish National Party. I always thought there was something fishy about their outfit, hardly surprising really when you remember that both their leaders were named after fish – Salmon and Sturgeon – but they have at least done away with hospital car parking charges in Scotland. Also, that irritating first minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, who gleefully told us during the Covid panic, “We love you to visit Wales…but not now!”, issued a similar moratorium on parking charges at Welsh hospitals. So why cannot England follow suit?
In point of fact, I was wrong to assume that pesky patients were taking up parking spaces needed for hospital workers. It seems that doctors, nurses and ancillary staff do have to pay parking charges, and they work there! In effect, you could say that parking charges have become a tax not only on the sick but also on those who care for them. The long and the short of it all is that everyone in a hospital is there because someone is very sick. It does not feel right – in fact it feels very wrong - that money should be made out of this sad circumstance.
Primum non nocere (‘First, do no harm’) is the opening charge of the Hippocratic oath that all doctors must sign when they start training. My suggestions for a second prerequisite would be this: Stipendium non imponimus ut quadrigas hic relinquatis. Naturally your school Latin would have allowed you to translate that – ‘We won’t charge you to park your cars here’. The Romans did not drive cars, but I guess they must have had to put their chariots (quadrigae) somewhere. Mind you, I doubt the chariot parks outside the valetudinari (Roman hospitals) were very busy. Life expectancy in Ancient Rome was only about 25, and much shorter if you ever wound up in one of these barbarous and disease-ridden institutions. Going private was a sine qua non for the nobility and imperial class. I bet the food was better too. Besides, getting sick in those days was your own bloody fault; somehow, you had upset the gods, and this was payback time. Nowadays, the coin goes into the mouth of the ticket machine rather than that of the dead patient.
Comments