Hospital car parks are often the first hurdle patients, visitors, and staff must overcome, adding stress to already high-pressure environments. This article explores how Hozah’s contactless parking technology is transforming the healthcare experience by eliminating delays, reducing complaints, and improving operational flow.
Hospitals are places of care, urgency, and compassion, but all too often, the experience begins and ends with a parking headache. Whether it’s circling for spaces, struggling with ticket machines, or receiving a penalty for an honest mistake, outdated parking systems continue to frustrate patients, visitors, and staff alike.
Hozah, a leading provider of automatic, contactless parking solutions, is working with healthcare organisations to change that. By removing barriers, both physical and technological, Hozah ensures that parking no longer adds unnecessary stress to already pressured environments. The result? A smoother, more seamless journey from the car park to the clinic, and back again.
The Challenge
Parking at hospitals comes with unique, high-stakes pressures. Time-critical access for ambulances and emergency vehicles must be maintained, while patients—often elderly, disabled, or in distress, need a clear, simple parking process. Staff face their own challenges, navigating shift patterns and tight schedules with little time for failed machines, manual permits, or long queues.
Despite these demands, many hospitals still rely on legacy parking infrastructure prone to downtime and confusion. Common issues include:
- Long queues at entry and exit barriers
- Faulty or coin-only machines
- Inadequate signage and unclear payment instructions
- High levels of Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs)
- Poor integration with staff and Blue Badge permit systems
The stakes are high: poor parking not only delays care but can also erode trust, increase complaints, and even impact clinical outcomes. For many visitors and staff, parking is the first and last impression of the hospital experience and it matters.
A Wider Issue: Parking Costs and Staff Sentiment
There has also been public and political controversy around NHS staff being required to pay for parking, especially during and after the pandemic. While parking charges are often necessary to manage demand and fund site maintenance, they must be applied fairly, transparently, and with minimal friction.
For healthcare organisations under scrutiny, modernising their parking infrastructure is a critical step toward rebuilding trust and improving internal morale.
Real People. Real Impact.
Visitor misses grandmother’s final moments:
One visitor to Darlington Memorial Hospital spent 45 minutes circling the car park before finding a space. By the time they reached the ward, their grandmother had passed away ten minutes earlier. “I just needed five minutes more,” they said. “But the car park was chaos, machines broken, no help, no chance.”
(The Northern Echo, 2023)
Nurses fined for turning up to work:
At Royal Oldham Hospital, a nurse received a parking ticket after covering a last-minute emergency shift, despite applying for a permit months earlier. “I was running into the ward to help and came back to a fine on my windscreen. It’s demoralising,” she told the BBC. With staff working long, unpredictable hours, many describe hospital parking as “a daily battle” that adds stress to already difficult jobs.
(BBC, 2023)
Objectives
Hospitals and healthcare trusts are increasingly seeking smart, adaptable parking systems that can:
- Minimise stress for patients and visitors
- Streamline access for staff and service vehicles
- Provide fast, unobstructed ingress and egress, especially at emergency departments
- Reduce complaints and reliance on manual enforcement
- Increase revenue collection for reinvestment into frontline care
- Require minimal maintenance and admin from already-stretched facilities teams
This is where Hozah comes in.
The Hozah Solution
Hozah’s fully automated digital parking ecosystem uses ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) to detect vehicle entry and exit, no tickets, no barriers, no apps. Drivers are billed automatically, or can pay online at their convenience, removing the pressure of finding machines or downloading unfamiliar systems.
For healthcare sites, this means:
- Frictionless drive-in/drive-out access, reducing congestion at critical points
- Flexible payment windows, helping patients who may be delayed or distressed
- Remote monitoring and automated reporting, reducing admin overhead
- Easy integration with existing permit systems, including staff and Blue Badge holders
- Minimal infrastructure required, allowing rapid, low-disruption deployment
Whether in a large urban hospital or a rural community clinic, Hozah helps sites improve operational flow and user satisfaction without adding complexity.
Results and Benefits
Where Hozah has been implemented, healthcare providers are seeing measurable, real-world improvements:
- A significant reduction in PCNs and complaints from patients and visitors
- Faster vehicle flow at hospital entrances and exits
- Improved compliance and increased capture of parking revenue
- Greater staff satisfaction thanks to easier, fairer parking access
- Stronger trust and public sentiment, reinforcing the organisation’s commitment to care
At one NHS Trust, parking-related complaints dropped by 34% within three months of switching to Hozah, and revenue increased by 22%, helping to fund improved access, signage, and other site upgrades.
Conclusion
In healthcare, every second counts, and every detail contributes to the overall experience. Parking might seem like a small issue, but when done well, it can improve access, reduce stress, and even support better outcomes.
With Hozah, hospitals can ensure that parking supports, not hinders, the delivery of care. From the ambulance bay to staff car parks, Hozah keeps hospitals moving efficiently, affordably, and with compassion at the core.
