Hospital sees end to visitor parking woes

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Hospital sees end to visitor parking woes

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As president of Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, I want to apologize for the parking difficulty that Arnold Malhmood and his family experienced (‘‘Hospital’s ‘parking mess,’” April 9 letter).

He brings attention to a challenge that our hospital and other hospitals face in the expanding suburbs. Although we cannot change the experience, I would like to share with Mr. Malhmood and the rest of our community what we are doing to address this situation.

First, by way of background, in 2005 we began a four-year, $100 million project to expand Shady Grove Adventist Hospital to meet the health care needs of our rapidly growing community. While this construction project has added 207,000 square feet of space to our hospital, it temporarily reduced campus parking.

To address this, we implemented several parking strategies: First, we have offered free valet parking for nearly three years for patients and visitors. In order to keep the valet service free, we have focused the service on our peak visitor hours during the daytime. We also designated the parking spaces that are the closest to our hospital for patients and visitors and moved most of our employee parking off our campus. Our security team is working to make sure that only patients and visitors use these spaces.

I am pleased to announce that beginning May 19, with the completion of the new staff and physician parking structure, we will also nearly double the size of our visitor parking. We expect that this additional space will alleviate the parking challenges on our campus.

I want to assure Mr. Malhmood and the rest of our community that, as we look toward the hospital’s future, we are seeking opportunities to enhance access to high-quality care and improve campus parking.

Dennis Hansen, Rockville

The writer is president of Shady Grove Adventist Hospital.