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

Most hospitals seem to be determined to push their patients and visitors to use public transport to reach them and seem completely oblivious to the fact that many people who are ill cannot cope with long complicated bus journeys and that many patients and their immediate family are elderly and not necessarily that fit and find public transport difficult and tiring.

DH has an appointment at our local hospital, which is over 20 miles away. You can get to the hospital by car, but parking is limited and leaves you walking several hundred yards to the entrance, not easy when you have a severe heart condition, plus, of course, once you reach the main entrance at the hospital you have to locate and walk, what feels like several miles, to the relevant outpatient department.

We investigated public transport as the bus stops at the main hospital entrance, but the bus journey from our town will take over one and a half hours each way and probably reuire a change of bus half way. My DH manages life uite well, but the journey to the hospital alone would leave him exhausted and unwell and I doubt if he could cope with the return journey. We would also be out of the house for up to 6 hours for a 15 minute appointment. Journey time by car is just over 30 minutes.

Now I do understand the problems hospitals have with parking. We used to live near Oxford and over 20 years we watched as parking got less and less as our local hospital built new buildings on car parks

Why do hospitals not have either their own park and rides with shuttle buses or work with local councils to get priority in their park and rides. Just asking people to use public transport, when many will not be well enough to use it, does not strike me as a solution to the problem.