Why do hospitals, most of whom have large catchment areas, make accessing them so difficult?

Our nearest hospital has A & E and is not too far away but needs to be accessed by car as the bus doesn’t go there from our small town. If we need to go up a level and go by car we can use a free Park and Ride. However, we are still mobile ATM so things would be trickier if we were not. Parking at the bigger hospital is very limited.

In the French healthcare system a hospital referral includes a prescription for transport. This is provided by specialised taxi companies called ambulances much to the confusion of some British tourists . The drivers have extra training and wait to take patients home after their appointment. Many people choose not to use the service but it is a godsend for the elderly and those too sick to drive. The cost is covered in full if you have a serious illness or you pay or your insurance pays about 30% of the cost otherwise.

The Freeman hospital in Newcastle have the wonderful Daft as a Brush charity who provide transport for oncology patients. They collect from your home and transport the patient and a companion then wait to take them home.

Thisismyname1953

If you are elderly or disabled your hospital should be able to arrange hospital transport to get you to your appointments. I think you need to phone the department of your appointment and explain that you cannot get there under your own steam . They should be able to provide an ambulance type minibus for your journey both there and back . Phone up and see .

I live in a (Scottish) town with its own hospital for routine stuff (dire parking) and A&E department. For consultant appointments, scans etc the nearest hospital is 65.6 miles away. Hospital transport plus appointment time can take all day depending on who else needs to be picked up and from where. I don’t really understand why consultants can’t hold clinics in this town.

If you are elderly or disabled your hospital should be able to arrange hospital transport to get you to your appointments. I think you need to phone the department of your appointment and explain that you cannot get there under your own steam . They should be able to provide an ambulance type minibus for your journey both there and back . Phone up and see .

I should add that she is unable to work and lives on benefits.

My daughter usually has weekly hospital appointments first thing on a Monday, too early to use her bus pass. She's signed up for hospital transport but it never seems to be available, so I end up paying £30 for her train fare.

The largest hospital in our capital city had a park and ride, very efficient with regular buses and ample parking. It's just been closed to build a data bank on the site. Parking at the hospital is dreadful. I get the bus to attend and drop hubby off for his appointments

Agree!

Our local hospital is 15 miles away and has absolutely dire parking. We have no buses from our village so have no choice but to use cars. Luckily they have recently re opened a park and ride that was closed at the start of covid to house one of those 'tent' hospitals that weren't used. The park and ride is 10 minutes from the hospital but only runs every half an hour now which is only a minibus and frequently the queues are very busy because the hospital is vast and sees a huge number of patients.

Our local hospital has extended a lot and taken some of the car parking

They expect people to cycle or get a bus which isn’t helpful to the elderly or disabled. So much so it can take up to an hour to get a parking space and many patients are then late for their appointments which is causing so many problems

A few years ago we considered retiring in the Yorkshire Dales. For various reasons we didn’t and I’m very glad about it now. The nearest major hospital would be Middlesborough or Newcastle, public transport is very poor, and it has recently been on the news that Reeth may lose its GP when the present incumbent retires.

Our health authority ( Leeds) seems to have outsourced a lot of out patient appointments to the private sector and that has worked well on the couple of occasions I have used it. However, when I went for a mammogram it was at St James’s a very big teaching hospital. Fortunately DH was able to drop me off at the relevant wing, but he then ended up driving round and round fruitlessly looking for somewhere to park.Fortunately I was straight in and out so he was able to just come and pick me up. I don’t know what I’ve have done if I was by myself. In future if I have to go by myself I’ll get a taxi, but fortunately I don’t live too far away and I can afford it. Public transport would be a 2 hour round trip and 15 mins walk each way, or 2 buses. It’s 20 mins in a car.

My county has one "major" hospital with two others where consultations,chemo can be carried out. About 4 years ago the main hospital built a orthopaedic unit to become the National Treatment Centre. This was inspite of, like many others have expressed there already being very poor parking for the previous hospital. For me I have to drive to a bus station, park and pay, then use a bus. Tried that in February, a horrible wet and windy day andcwhat happened. Due to another bus being in the stance allocated for my bus, the driver drove into another bay, no information or anyone informing awaiting passengers. The bus drove off and I had to walk back to the car park, drive to the hospital, struggled to find a parking space but did eventually arriving 20 mins late but fortunately there was a queue to see the consultant. The bus I needed ran every 1 hour 10 mins. Yet politicians are consrantly telling us to use public transport, wouldn't be so bad if there was any transport to use.

For my recent set of appts, I used ‘JustPark’ - an app that allows you to book a space on a private driveway. The map shows you how far away it is. Prices were very reasonable

Living in a city with bus access to the door of one hospital, a, simple bus change in town that has the next bus again to the door of the hospital and another that's a short walk from the bus stop.. All with lots of parking, I really didn't think about any of this.
Although I often get taxis to appointments because I don't drive but even then every hospital has drop off points at every entrance.
I suppose I'm lucky to live in a city with a huge teaching hospital trust which means we have 4 main hospitals and then 3 smaller ones. I've honestly never thought about how awkward it must be not living this close to hospitals.

I am lucky enough to live within walking distance of a shuttle service that connects the hospital in our town to the main county hospital, a 30-minute bus ride away. However, for some inexplicable reason it only operates Mon-Fri. A lot of health care workers use the service, and a lot of them don't work Mon-Fri. When my husband was in hospital recently I had to resort to a less convenient service or lifts from a relative for weekend visits.

Our local hospital lost some of its services 20 odd years ago,including maternity and neo natal,though there is a small midwife led service for women with straightforward pregnancies.
Heart stroke and cancer patients have togoto Glasgow or Paisley .There is a bus that leaves twice an hour for Paisley that takes patients and visitors across the Erskine bridge and can be used to return home….the bus will stop at different points on the route.
It’s free to all who need itand was a godsend when my sister spent months in hospital after 2 heart attacks and a series of strokes .It’s free to use and it stps right outside the hospital
reception .Good for people who find the steep hill a problem

I get a taxi. I can't afford to, but am not well enough to drive into the city centre through nightmare traffic to get to any of the hospitals I've had to attend recently, and there is limited parking. I am just not up to the stress of it.

No direct buses so would have to change bus en route.

Is it Addenbrooke's by any chance? If it is, your best bet is to drive to one of the park and ride car parks and take a bus direct to the hospital outpatients from there.

These days, most people are directed to a variety of different hospitals and even private providers, resulting from the NHS internal market (going back to 2011). Each board buys in services for different specialisms from different providers.

BlueBelle

My local hospital whilst only 8 miles away necessitates two buses for me ( no car) and the subsequent waiting around for them especially if they miss one out, they also take the long route to accommodate all the villages, so I can easily be more than an hour to go the eight miles so I usually get to the hospital a couple of hours early and watch the world go by in and out reception.
It’s a big problem and shutting down all the cottage hospitals or out of hours places has made it much more of a nightmare
I don’t mean to be rude but didn’t you move recently Monica did you not foresee this being a problem, 20 miles is a long way to have to get to a hospital in old age

Medical services come at many levels and we have moved to a town where doctors, dentists, pharmacy, Walk in centre, podiatrists are all within a couple of hundred yards. These are the services we use on a day to day basis. previously they were 5 miles away.

We have one hospital 12 miles and a 20 minute drive away, with excellent parking, we then have a specialist heart hospital 20miles plus away with easy parking and then the one we are going to today where parking and access is more of a problem.

The difficulty is, and this we could not know, is that in this health authorityy you never know at which location, even a routine appointment will be. Mostly we go to the local easy access hospital but now and again we get called in to clinics further away.

This is our first visit to this hospital and the whole wording of the access information was indifferent ,essentially 'Parking is difficult come by bus' without any consideration that many people coming to the hospital will be old and/or ill, The hospital provides services over a large relatively sparsely populated area and visiting hospital by bus is either impossible because of distance, or state of health.

Overall we have moved somewhere, and chose it because access to the medical services we use most are all so close. It is this one hospital DH has been asked to attend, where parking is not good, and they do not seem to care.

My Mum and BiL have both needed a number of appointments over the last few years, so we have developed a three man system. I drive, and we drop Mum or BiL at the front hospital entrance, with another relative with them. I then find a parking space and join them, or if that is impossible, I go and park on a side street, and they ring when they have finished so I pick them up from the front entrance again. It’s difficult to organise initially, but it saves a huge amount of hassle and worry for everybody on the day.

20 miles is a long way to have to get to hospital in old age

Yes, it is, but 20 miles is the distance to get to either of our nearest hospitals.

For more complicated treatments, it’s about 50 miles away, to get to bigger specialist city ones.

My local hospital whilst only 8 miles away necessitates two buses for me ( no car) and the subsequent waiting around for them especially if they miss one out, they also take the long route to accommodate all the villages, so I can easily be more than an hour to go the eight miles so I usually get to the hospital a couple of hours early and watch the world go by in and out reception.
It’s a big problem and shutting down all the cottage hospitals or out of hours places has made it much more of a nightmare
I don’t mean to be rude but didn’t you move recently Monica did you not foresee this being a problem, 20 miles is a long way to have to get to a hospital in old age

We have two hospitals here. One is easily accessed from where I live by bus - door to door. Unfortunately most of the surgical and diagnostic services have now been steadily moved to the one on the Northern edge of the city which has grown so much it is now the size of a very large village. If I wanted to get there on public transport it would involve two buses and take a hour and forty minutes - and that’s just to get you to the main entrance of the huge site. Parking? Forget it. (On the day DH died, my daughter drove around frantically trying to find somewhere to park, then gave up, parked off site and ran half a mile to be at his bedside - just in time). The work they do there is amazing and cutting edge. The anxiety that accessing those services causes patients and their relatives is not acceptable.