Hospital Changes Visiting Hours To Ease Car Park Congestion

Published on: 29 Jun, 2013
Updated on: 30 Jun, 2013

The Royal Surrey County Hospital where visiting hours are set for an imminent change.

by Victoria Lazarevic

From Monday (July 1), the Royal Surrey County Hospital will be changing its afternoon visiting hours from 2pm to 4pm to a new time of 3pm to 5pm.

The hospital communications team issued a news release stating: “The change in afternoon visiting hours comes as the [hospital] trust has identified a peak of people arriving at the hospital at around 2pm, which often results in congestion in the car park.

“After careful consideration, rather than remove this option, they have decided to shift it back by an hour to 3pm to 5pm. The Royal Surrey County Hospital remains one of the few acute hospitals who still offer afternoon visiting hours.

“The trust hopes that this will ease some of the congestion experienced in the car park by improving the availability of car parking spaces. Evening visiting hours remain unchanged at 6pm to 8pm.”

The hospital’s travel plan co-ordinator, Darren Little, said: “We are looking at all options as regards to increasing the availability of car parking for patients/visitors.

“The congestion that we have at the moment is largely down to the fact that some morning outpatients are staying on after their clinics for lunch this combined with outpatients attending afternoon clinics and visitors arriving early to get a parking space has created a peak demand at around 14.00 hours.

“We are changing the afternoon visiting hours to hopefully help ease this congestion. The car parks will be closely monitored to see how effective this change is”.

Patient governor David Chuter said: “Patients will have more time to have rest after lunch and will not be waiting for someone to turn up so early in the day… also they are not going to be disturbed by doctors rounds during a visit because they would have been done earlier. I feel it’s a good thing for patients.”

“It could be a little more awkward [for visitors]. If you are visiting your husband or wife you may come for an hour in the earlier visiting time then again later so [the changes] could mean there is less time to see the patient in hospital. However, it may be good in the sense if they are only able to come once for a visit it may save on parking charges.”

Mr Chuter had actually put these changes to a small group meeting of the Oesophageal Cancer (OG) support group on Thursday evening asking how they felt about them, he told me: “The overall response was positive because the issue of parking will ease.”

Patients and visitors have been informed of these changes by notices on the website, radio, switchboard and notices throughout the hospital and wards. The hospital have an agreement with CP Plus, the hospital parking company, to monitor the effect of the changes.

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