Peter Park: Reduce Operating Costs in Hospitals With Digital Parking Management

Rising energy prices have been causing increasing problems for private households and businesses for almost a year - and hospitals and clinics have not been spared the price increases either. Healthcare facilities are desperately looking for ways to make savings, not only to reduce costs and staffing levels, but also to make administration and processes more efficient in the long term.

Savings potential for hospitals & clinics

But where are the opportunities to reduce or even eliminate costs in the administration and management of healthcare facilities? The design, management and processes around parking areas hold enormous potential not only to enable easy and user-friendly parking for patients, visitors and employees, but also to reduce costs and make the mixed use of parking areas profitable and efficient through process automation and the resulting optimization. In the following, we have listed the greatest savings potentials for you:

Abolish barrier systems

One of the biggest cost factors is not only the purchase but also the maintenance of barrier systems. High maintenance costs due to defective barriers are eliminated by barrier-free parking management. Parkers are detected on entry and exit by license plate recognition via cameras; it is not necessary to stop in front of the barriers. Eliminating barriers not only saves money, but also prevents repair costs, lost revenue, and dissatisfied visitors in the event of system failures.

Control personnel can take on value-adding tasks

Do you have to have staff patrolling your parking area to prevent and, if necessary, track down parking violators? Digital management of your parking area eliminates this cost factor as well and enables easy identification and tracking of parking violators without additional effort for hospital staff, who can concentrate on value-adding tasks. Likewise, the digital parking management system facilitates mixed-use management. Whether patients, staff or visitors, automatic license plate recognition and the ability to store flexible conditions according to user groups simplifies the management of user data via the Peter Park dashboard to ensure easy and pleasant parking for all users of the parking area.

Paper costs

It's often the inconspicuous things that cause costs and can be saved - these include paper tickets, for example. With the digital and barrier-free parking solution, the parking time is determined and the parking process is completed when parkers enter their license plate number at the machine and make the payment either directly at the machine or with a partner app. Eliminating paper tickets not only reduces costs, but also eliminates additional waste by eliminating magnetic cards and paper passes.

Optimize revenue streams for clinics & hospitals

Digitizing parking areas eliminates acquisition and maintenance costs for barrier systems and reduces administrative costs and effort. Furthermore, the possibility arises to optimize revenue sources for hospitals and clinics through the use of tariff structures for different user groups.

Case study: Porz am Rhein Hospital

The benefits for a healthcare company of digitizing a complete parking infrastructure are shown by the example of the Porz am Rhein hospital in Cologne. Taking over the independent management of the parking areas and implementing the digital parking management system eliminates the maintenance and servicing costs of the barrier system as well as manual control of parking violations by staff. Flexibly bookable tickets adapt to the needs of patients, employees and visitors. The barrier-free system was integrated as part of the hospital's mobility campaign, which included subsidies for job tickets for local public transport and e-bikes for employees.

"As a modern, future-oriented healthcare company, we have taken up the cause of sustainable mobility in addition to cutting-edge medicine (...)." - Arist Hartjes, Managing Director Porz am Rhein Hospital

Implementation of the parking management system

Digital parking management with Peter Park

The Peter Park system is ideal for managing parking areas with different user groups, as is the case with healthcare facilities. The license plate numbers of incoming and outgoing cars are recorded in a DSGVO-compliant manner and the Peter Park dashboard enables the management of the parking area to the minute. Long-term parkers such as employees or even patients can be easily added or removed and wrong parkers are quickly identified for follow-up. The option of contactless payment through partner apps such as Easypark helps to support hygiene concepts, especially in facilities such as hospitals and clinics.

Success Stories

But Porz am Rhein Hospital is not the only one to benefit financially from the digitization of its parking area with the Peter Park system; barriers are also a thing of the past at other healthcare facilities in Germany and Austria. "The switch to the electronic system is modern, environmentally friendly and avoids costly service and maintenance work on the barrier system," says Klaudia Watzinger, commercial director of Landesklinikum Scheibbs in Austria.

At the Arberlandklinik in Viechtach, Bavaria, digital management of the parking area ensures that patients, employees and visitors always have sufficient parking spaces available. At the same time, CO2 emissions are reduced by eliminating the need for cars to wait at the barrier.

These were also decisive points for the modernization of the parking lot of the Schrobenhausen hospital. After the parking situation at the district hospital repeatedly caused discussions in the past, not only the management of the small number of parking spaces is easier, the economic advantage through the collection of parking fees is obvious: "We would like to invest the revenue in turn in the renewal of the parking spaces and in the promotion of alternative means of transport and electromobility," says hospital managing director Holger Koch.

Conclusion:

A digital parking management system offers healthcare facilities the opportunity to benefit from economic advantages: On the one hand, high costs for the acquisition, maintenance and repairs of barrier systems are eliminated. By digitizing the parking process and the associated process automation, healthcare facilities achieve savings resulting from increased process efficiency. For example, staff patrols to identify and follow up on parking violators are no longer necessary thanks to digital registration of license plates, and further savings for hospitals and clinics also result from the elimination of paper tickets. Revenue from parking fees can be used to maintain parking areas or invest in internal mobility concepts to make life easier for employees. An additional advantage is the simple management of parking users with different needs, who can be offered flexible conditions. In this way, patients and their visitors as well as employees can concentrate on the essentials on site and do not lose time unnecessarily searching for parking spaces or waiting in front of barriers.

About Peter Park 

The Munich-based company Peter Park System GmbH is a leading service and system provider for barrier-free parking. The Peter Park cloud and IoT infrastructure allows individual solutions for parking areas, multi-storey car parks and underground garages. Intelligent license plate sensors, state-of-the-art touch pay stations and versatile integrations with mobility service providers ensure maximum flexibility. Peter Park serves public and private customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and now has over 100 employees from eleven countries.