Valet Parking

[Roseyposey]

My hospital announced as part of its commitment to customer service, it will now start to offer valet parking. I am very comforted by the thought that our patients' visitors will no longer have to walk from their parking spots to the elevators. I will reflect on this many times as I take care of my seven patients without the benefit of an aid or unit secretary. I am so glad that the hospital finally realized exactly what they need to do to fix our satisfaction scores.

[CRNAGAL]

Our hospital just started a valet service due to a lot of construction going on in the patient parking lot. I think its a lot better for our elderly and sick patients to be able to park at the door rather than circle the lot endlessly or have to park a mile away. My mom has a really hard time with mobility and recently had multiple clinic visits before and after a surgery and the valet service was a godsend. They were also helpful in transporting her to her appointment which was quite a hike away. I think its great that we can offer our patients this service.

[jackson145]

I think patients would be most pleased with more staff. Most of the complaints I hear are that they had to wait for their medicine or help to the BR, etc. I've never seen a floor with adequate staff. Our administration does look at the patients as customers, though. We even have screen saver messages that say just that. We are a fairly small town and have two hospitals so we are always competing for patients. If the hospital across town implements something new we have to match (or top) it.

[jackson145]

Also, a customer is someone to whom you are providing services. We don't provide services to the insurance company. True, the patient is in a monetary relationship with their insurance company, but it is a middle-man relationship. The no-insurance, cash only patient deals directly with the facility and so will the patient with insurance after the insurance company has paid their part and there is still an amount left to be paid. If a patient gets poor service, like having the healthy kidney removed instead of the diseased one, does an insurance company suffer the ill health effects? No, the patient is the one who receives the services (whether they are good or bad). I pay with Visa at the grocery store, but I am the customer, not Visa and the store should try to keep my business not Visa's.

[Jo Dirt]

I got a job at this hospital and noticed they were referring to patients as customers.

La-dee-dah

[KaroSnowQueen, RN]

The hospitals in my area that are doing valet parking do it for the visitors for free, abso-smurfly for free!!! The last hospital I was working for did a survey for what patients wanted in a new hospital they are building (over in the swanky area of the county where all the docs and millionaires live). Guess what?? The prospective patients wanted a "resort experience" when they go to the hospital.

Well, big whoop. I wanted one too, as a patient, but its pretty hard when you've been cut open and have big bandages and beeping iv's and noisy danged roommates and the secretaries blaring over the intercom.

When they released that information in-house via email, I emailed back and asked if that meant we would have increased nursing staff in that hospital, and if so, I wantd to be first in line for transfer. They didn't answer me before I quit, I wonder why?????

[jackson145]

Seems like a waste for visitors (unless elderly?) I think it would be a great idea for the ER, though. I can't think of a worse time to search for a parking space than during a MI/kidney stone/vomiting & diarrhea.

[Reno1978, BSN, RN]

My facility has valet too and it's easier to direct people who took advantage of this service to valet than try to figure out which parking lot, parking garage, street, or building they parked near to (maybe) give them directions to where their car might be.

[Shantas]

Perhaps along with valet parking the hospital should also have some slat machine and black jack table....oh also a spa station....just like any 5 star hotel in the country....the patients and their families will have a retreat and hospital will make profit....and us, the nurses will have job security!!!!.......

[JohnOnOahu]

The sad fact is that without some level of quality ranking how are patients supposed to decide on what facility to go to?

Take for instance a hospital I frequently work with in NYC...its a medium sized facility and not easy to get to. Although they're within 15 minutes of some of the best hospitals in the world they've got their fair share of top-notch nurses. Unfortunately, the only way they feel that they can get patients in the door is to provide them with an atmosphere more "comfortable" than that afforded by many of the larger more urban-esque hospitals located nearby....and it works. The added benefit is that the staff has a more pleasant work environment too.

The trick is for administrators to take care of the "fro-froo" stuff AND provide for outstanding clinical care.

[ponderosa]

Valet Parking- oh yes, another Marketing Scheme to make your hosptial look upscale. We are the only community hospital in our county. Our Valet people consist of the retired volunteers who drive golf carts, ( which I might add you can easily fall out of- personal experinence). The uniforms are a shirt with the hosptial logo. The rest is whatever they seem to have that is not in the laundry.

The BAD part is they go home at 4pm. I come on duty at that time. People need thier cars pulled around because of all the orthopedic injuries. Oh I forgot to mention, out new hospital forgot to " light up " the ambulatory entrance and exit. So my patients are stuggling with the dark, the curbs and now ice and snow .

Valet Parking ! Sounds like a credit card offer with a limited good interest rate.

pondersa in MD

[Agnus]

Two hospitals where (both places I worked) intitiated this when parking became a preimium because of hospital construction. I do not know if this continued once new parking sites were built. In both cases it was free. In both case you were allowed but not required to tip.

In both cases employees could use it if you were a patient, visiting a pt., or your dropping in briefly for some work related business and then leaving.