Hospital parking garages charge by the hour but ER visits average 4.5 hours with zero grace period

Emergency room patients and their families arrive in crisis, park in the nearest hospital garage, and have zero ability to predict how long they will be inside. The average ER visit lasts 4.5 hours, and complex cases stretch to 8-12 hours, racking up $30-60 in parking fees while someone is getting stitched up or waiting for test results. Patients sometimes leave the ER mid-treatment to move their car or feed the meter, delaying care and risking discharge. Hospitals outsource parking to third-party operators like LAZ and SP+ under revenue-sharing contracts that incentivize maximum fee extraction, and these operators have no relationship with the clinical mission of the facility. Validation systems exist but require patients to remember to ask at discharge — something people in medical distress routinely forget.