Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic Parking Improvements

Upgrade The Technology

While “good parking spaces” might not seem high on the list of services that a hospital or medical center should provide, they can be a crucial part of the overall experience for a patient.

It’s common for the parking lots of health institutions to be crowded, with some employees taking the best spaces instead of using designated employee parking.

The majority of these institutions have implemented foot patrols to enforce parking restrictions for employees and other users, but the costs quickly add up thanks to the high number of manual processes involved. In some cases, building more parking spaces might relieve congested lots for a while, but at $5,000 per ground-level space and up to $40,000 per below-ground space, that isn’t necessarily the best, nor the most cost-efficient option.

The good news is, there’s a solution. In even better news, it’s been proven to work.

After pouring resources into parking lot management without seeing the results they needed, the Mid-West Division of Kaiser Permanente decided to switch to using OperationsCommander, a cloud-based parking and enforcement platform.

In the last year, they have been able to streamline registration and profile management, decrease the workload on patrol staff, and allow limited HR access to manage permit restrictions of employees who had exited the company, ensuring that parking spaces weren’t being wasted because of outdated permits.

Centralize The Service

Kaiser Permanente had a few complicating factors, such as the status of their parking spaces – some they owned, but others they rented or shared with other companies.

Another factor was their size. With almost 750,000 members and around 8,500 employees distributed among medical offices across the mid-Atlantic, there were more than just a couple of parking lots that needed management. Each location had different rules of access, but they all needed an improved management process.

They needed to efficiently control access to certain areas, ensuring that the patients, not the employees, get the most convenient parking spaces. Using an Android app that integrates with the parking permit database, and GPS, patrol staff can now easily identify registered vehicles just by taking a photo.

The platform was even modified to make it a better fit for the company’s policies so that instead of automatic financial penalties for violations, a notification could be sent to an appropriate supervisor in order to support an internal process.

Now all of their parking staff are registered in a single database and have 24/7 access to a branded online portal. They can use any connected device to manage and update personal information such as their mailing addresses, vehicles, permit requests, and even an online appeals process.

The platform administrators can manage users by employee type to determine where they can park, how the parking is paid for, what times of day or night they have access to the space, and more. It’s now less complicated for patrol staff to check for potential violations, and with the ParkAdmin and ViolationAdmin modules, they can enforce parking rules seamlessly using the Android app.

The location-specific requirements for each medical center are taken into account and integrated into the platform, enabling all users to share and manage relevant information.

Become More Efficient

Since using OperationsCommander to manage their parking spaces, Kaiser Permanente has been able to decrease congestion in the client parking areas, as well as significantly reduce time spent enforcing parking restrictions.

Thanks to the focus on user integration through the online portal, there are now significant savings in time and money being spent on parking enforcement. The platform is backed by over 20 years of development, with an innovative team that can modify it to suit unique circumstances and needs.

As you could expect, there are already considerations to expand the capabilities of the OperationsCommander install; these future updates could include a License Plate Recognition feature and payment options for permits or violations via an integrated PCI-compliant payment solution.

Kaiser Permanente is just one example of an industry leader that has not only fixed but greatly improved its parking management.

Many hospitals or medical centers might know that they have a parking problem, but not know why it happened or how to fix it. Unfortunately, without a modern parking management solution, the best they can do is guess.

Manual permits and hand-written tickets may still work, but for companies that are having parking troubles, the results are clear: OperationsCommander simply works better.