Firms
targeting patients with extortionate 'fines' during appointments
Trusts
also using private companies to hound patients for payments
Government
announces formal investigation into parking cowboys
Politicians
call on hospitals to sack companies issuing unfair tickets
Hospitals
last night faced huge pressure to sack pirate parking squads after it emerged
more than three quarters of NHS trusts are using them to police their car
parks.
Rogue firms have been given free rein across the majority of
the country, allowing them to target patients with extortionate ‘fines’ during
their medical appointments.
A Daily Mail survey found many trusts are also using private
companies to hound patients for payments, with threats of court hearings.
Politicians
and campaigners last night called on hospitals to sack firms found to be
issuing unfair tickets.
Sarah Wollaston, chairman of the Commons health select
committee, said: ‘If they are behaving
in an unscrupulous way, targeting the most vulnerable patients, then they
should be stripped of their contracts.’
The former GP and Tory MP for Totnes added: ‘Patients may end up with fines for
something that is no fault of their own. I don’t think the NHS can wash their
hands of responsibility.’
Conservative MP Andrew Percy, also on the committee,
described tactics used in NHS car parks as ‘totally
unacceptable’, adding: ‘The problem the trusts have is that they have
to upgrade the parking facilities and if they don’t charge it will come out of
the NHS budget.
‘But what they are
doing is contracting this work out and then washing their hands of it.’
Campaigner Roger Goss, from Patient Concern, added: ‘We understand they are desperate to raise
more money but this is a disreputable way of going about it.’
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