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:thumbup:

Brits do love their dogs. He was 18 but still, he had a great send off



Re the hospital parking, we had to pay a load of money annually to park in the car park when attending to our patients :confused: And they wonder why we don't want to cover our hospital patients..

We also had to pay another load of money to maintain our " hospital privileges " to let us get paid bugger all to look after our patients in hospital - thankfully they have moved into the second half of the 20th century and have hospital doctors looking after patients now rather than their own doc who could well be on the ski hills or on the lake depending on the season.

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Regarding the hospital parking, in Hamilton the staff have to pay a monthly fee to use the parking facilities. Yes, you pay to go to work!

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I agree completely. And that's the attitude I would adopt in the UK.

But this is Canada where prescriptions are not included in healthcare even where the hospital gives you a prescription. You need to get your own crutches sorted, waiting lists for wheelchairs, hospital beds at home and so many things.

The mind boggles at what you might need to pay for if there were no parking charges...you'll have that operation but you have to pay for your own stitches? :eek:

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Well lets talk about car parks and if people should pay or not.

Hospitals are normally built with taxpayer funded dollars so when a hospital is built within your municipality or whatever you want to call it you are paying for that hospital and if a car park is built you are paying for that.

IKEA build a store and a car park. They want you to visit that store so in most cases the parking is free much like Walmart and other stores.

Sports stadiums can be a mixture of tax payer dollars and private investment dollars. They also have car parks. Very few if any stadiums provide free parking.

Now one should start looking at the companies who run paying car parks like Impark etc etc and ask if their fees are reasonable? Who pays for maintenance of these parking lots?

There are other options if not happy with parking rates.

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I've often commented on how motorists in Bristol shunned the bus service considering their car took them door to door when in reality few employers in the city had parking (or enough parking) for their employees and that cars either had to park at least a 20 minute walk away from the work place or pay at least a tenner a day to park.

The main hospital in Bristol (10 minutes walk from shops and offices) is near an NCP that charges £21 for 6+ hours :eek: A council car park in the other direction is £10 a day.

Our hospital car park here is well placed to be treated as a park and ride with two buses covering about 80% of the city.

On weekends when the parking meters around the car park are free, they're all full. During the week the hospital parking is generally full. The sign says so at most times during the day.

I only ever worked in one place with parking. That was the big regional office. One place had zero parking and visiting officers had spaces paid for as they'd have nowhere available to park when returning to the office in the day and another place had about 20 spots so the office took an appropriate number from the local NCP (say another 20) and divided the cost of those 20 by 40 so 40 people at least had half NCP price parking.

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I agree parking can be policed easily without charging. 2 hour limit for visitors, tow the offenders. Patients and others who need longer then 2 hours, get a pass to place in their car.


Parking can be cost prohibitive for some people, I have on occasion when at the hospital getting a test done not been able to pay because we happened to not have any money available.


Same around here, and you see lots of hospital staff walking blocks as they have parked in residential areas around the hospital to avoid paying, I live a couple blocks from the hospital and every day cars parked along the street and hospital staff walking to/from the hospital.

Lots of people have to pay for parking at work though, downtown workers in major city's, airport workers at times do if their company doesn't pay for it. When I worked for one company at an airport, the company didn't cover the parking, and I paid $75/month for the ability.

would have taken transit if offered, but my shift started at 5am, first bus didn't arrive until 7:45am.

When I worked in Whistler I was lucky as I worked for a parking company so free parking, but most who work in the area pay and some lots are upwards of $100 or more per month, some as low as $50, really depended how far you wanted to walk.

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Pretty much all the local GPs have resigned their admitting privileges and the hospital are employing internists, or whatever they are called.

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I don't have to shell out for working at the hospital, I ditched that archaic practice long ago. Nurses however don't sometimes have safe alternatives, they finish an evening shift at 9-9.30pm, then "have the option" of walking half a mile in the dark possibly down poorly lit streets to their car- :unsure: or be safer and shell out a load of cash monthly to be safe and park within the grounds. I bet administrators/ managers will find some way of avoiding these fees. In the UK, there are a lot of PFI hospitals and they use cowboy car park companies who are just out to clamp you. They have charged in hospital car parks since I've worked in them which is a few years now.

Hospitalists. And about bloody time too! The hospitals liked it as we were paid so badly that we were way cheaper than hospitalists. As you know bats, having doctors looking after patients who are off site for all but about an hour first thing isn't exactly in th best interests of the patients.

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The prescriptions comment may be the rule in NB but it doesn't apply in Ontario. I was medicated free of charge in hospital for three months and post operation left with a two month supply, worth some $10,000 if I'd had to pay for them.

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You would probably end up paying an arm and a leg :unsure:

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Get a ticket/chit and have it validated inside the hospital, same as in stores. My 'orthoscoper' has an office in the kinesiology center at the university phys-ed building and parkade tickets get stamped in the clinic. When I go to Sask Polytechnic I have to pay $2/hr because there are no other options, but when visiting or going to appts in hospital I park on side streets and walk.

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That certainly doesn't work in the hospitals around here, or indeed clinics

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Oh I didn't mean to suggest it couldn't be done. It's just that a towing company would need to be paid; admin staff need to be employed to validate the chits and/or confirm the eligibility for the hundreds of people parking there during the day/ additional security staff need to be hired for potential confrontation.

So the hospitals will not only lose the revenue, they have to fork out additional funding for the extra costs. Where's that coming from if not services?

Absolutely. But that's just one of the many things missing from Canada's social systems with far too many people always complaining about their tax dollars and handouts to the lazy and feckless - as they see it. :(


Well of course. In hospital means as an in-patient getting treatment. Of course that's included. I was talking about the hospital giving a prescription (not the drug itself) - one that has to be filled at an outside pharmacy after discharge.

I very much doubt giving a patient three months worth of medication upon discharge is the norm. It might be a better alternative than occupying a hospital bed and getting three months worth of treatment that can be done at home.

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Well, Kelowna is still a resort and Regina is a capital city, someday. ;) As I said, the hospital lots charge, (I think the standard $2/hr, maybe more) so I park nearby. Nobody pays to park in Oliver, not anywhere.;) I like the welcoming message free or cheap downtown parking sends to shoppers, and used to like visiting downtown Penticton's main street, but now I see they even want to charge a $15 permit fee for some homeowners to park on the street in front of their houses. Usually I can still do all my business there without plugging a meter but when I do I'm pretty careful about not overstaying and getting a ticket..

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No. Towing charges the tow-ee, the receptionist validates the chits when you register and security marks the bad cars on their rounds.

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My driveway is available if anyone if anyone wants to park on it instead of the hospital. Just a five minute walk.

From here of course. :rofl:

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I will be PM ing you as necessary! Many thanks!

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That's what I mean. Additional security needed.

Mainly though, there are at least 200 parking spaces at our hospital. The "full" sign is illuminated most of the day from about 9.00am on. When you consider that out patients and visitors are only there for a couple of hours with people leaving and people taking their place that's several hundred people every day asking the receptionist (and they're not all out patients with appointments in the system, they could be walk-ins and visiting patients) to check they have a hospital reason to use the car park and validate their chit.

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No. No additional security. No. I was a hospital security guard, and I was a security guard in a big hotel with a parkade so I've done the job. Shopping centres with parkades often have some businesses that validate parking stubs, it isn't hard.

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I did hotel security in California at a large hotel.

Oh the things I saw. Got to know the police well.

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:lol: Oh yeah! One of my early jobs was porter in the old Hotel Saskatchewan and that's the end of innocence right there. I had no idea... It's a far better job than security even though a bit boring because the tips are substantial and it isn't confrontational. As security they expect you to go talk to the drunken superstar who played his concert and is now ranting at 2 AM keeping the neighbours up, and they don't really want to evict him - you get a hair over minimum wage and no back up from management. (I finally assured him we would throw him out and he shut up but it took a long time and I hated it.) I turned my parkade rounds into a game and figured out the best strategies for catching thieves and vandals and glue sniffers in the stairwells, approaching from either side and carefully listening at the doors, coming from the upper levels quietly down the ramps. Once I saw 2 young men, 1 a lookout looking down the ramp and the other breaking into a car and I knew I'd never catch them so I pretended I was a little drunk and asked if they could help me and they both walked right into my arms. For $3.50/hr you have to make your own fun. ;)

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Yes, but that was part of what your job was. This isn't currently a part of the security staff job. There's a charge for parking so there is currently no need to go out and "mark the bad cars" because there are none. The cars are legitimately parked because people pay.

So to start doing it is additional. They'd have to go out to the parking lot and do rounds at various points in the day that they don't currently do. I imagine they'd wonder where the time would come from without extra staff?

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Keith Moon? :rofl:

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:banghead: You're right Bristol. You've been right all along and I was lying. There are no security checks regularly done of hospital parking lots or anywhere else. The attendant in the little booth doesn't have to check on the cars that have been there all day to see if they overstay and the attendant in the little suv that drives around looking for stubs on dashboards is just listening to the radio and looking out the window. It wouldn't make any sense to have some cars whose owners are eligible to have their tickets validated because it would be extra work for the receptionist to stamp them, it would be extra, and the guy in the booth wouldn't know what to do if presented with a validated ticket, because it would be extra. I'm not going to let the facts or experience get in the way.:sarcasm: No. That would be extra.

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Andre Phillipe Gagnon, iirc.

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Well I can only speak for the Hospital car park here where you pay according to stay. There's an hourly rate. They get a ticket on entry and pay according to stay when leaving. There's no need to check how long a car is there, it's on the ticket.

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Sounds like a better class of drunk superstar.:lol:

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And with all due respect they are two different specialities. The NHS method of going looked after by a specialist in your condition rather than your GP makes more sense to me.

Prescriptions issued in Ontario hospitals are free. As Out patients they aren't. As you had started your medications in hospital then the rest of the prescription run would have been issued free.

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That's nice. What about if you went into Emerge, got checked over/repaired/sent home as it's only bruised ribs etc and they gave a prescription for percocet or something?

My mother in law tells me that in Quebec she had to pay $2 for a dressing when her husband was treated. :ohmy:

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Nope, not that night, just another inconsiderate asshole.

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[QUOTE=bats;12103839]And with all due respect they are two different specialities. The NHS method of going looked after by a specialist in your condition rather than your GP makes more sense to me.


It may be set up differently with you but I doubt it. Hospitalists are not internists. If I went completely bat-sh!t crazy, I could ditch general practice and become a hospitalist without further training. Being an Internist is indeed a different specialty (not great English but you get the gist) - typically medical physicians. They helped us out when we were working in hospital if we were struggling with very sick medical patients. They also admit to ICU and CCU. Also obviously general surgeons, orthopods, gynaecologists, paediatricians, radiologists etc have their role and look after the relevant patients directly or by referral

The hospitalists act kind of similarly to junior docs but don't really as they are responsible for the patients unlike in the UK where the Consultant holds the ultimate responsibility .

As you know, say if a patient comes in to ER with abdo pain, they get assessed by the ER doc, are then referred under the care of the general surgeons,as they would be in the UK and there is no need for the hospitalists to get involved unless the patient develops a medical problem- because surgeons know absolutely nothing about medical problems :lol:

Does that make sense?:unsure:

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The word orthopod made me think about getting some seafood for lunch...

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Top tip: When having to take your niece and nephew to Granville Island kids market, don't dink a bottle rye whiskey the night before. :(

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You didn't go after one of those mimes again, did you?

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No, but top tip number two. If you've ignored the aforementioned advice, take the small bottle of brandy that you bought to make the Christmas cake with you. :thumbup:

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I worked for a parking company and even with paid parking they generally have staff going around checking the validity of the cars and see if they had paid and if the time had expired.

We also did some hospitals and it was the same, but the system was a pre-pay system, not like airports where you pay at the end.

You would arrive pay 2 hours, then stay 3, parking person doing rounds sees you paid for 2 and its expired and issues a citation.

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Yes, that's a different method to what happens at our hospital. All kinds of methods work, some better than others.

Our hospital car parking organisers must think it's an airport. :lol:

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No more free beer as part of the retirement package..

Labatt employees mourn the end of beer-for-life era - Edmonton - CBC News

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No doubt there are some who will say that's a good thing to be denied Labatt's beer. :nod:

I used to drink it in The Bush pub, Totterdown which is now a nursery I believe,

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I like to make the case that people will put up with an awful lot providing that they think they are being treated fairly.

It's only a small gesture, and this 'free' beer isn't free, custom and practice will have loosely associated it into the overall retirement package. Over time these gestures solidify to become the mortar that binds the building blocks of society together.

Their removal exemplifies, in a small part, why a Brexit could happen and why a man likeTrump could find himself elected.

Those shareholder perks never seem to be taken away, and those outrageous executive pay deals are rarely questioned, but for the retiree and the guy whose just been made redundant, these stories and the pettiness associated with them just grind away at the mortar leaving those social building blocks precariously placed above the Chasm of Chaos.