What’s the Cure for Parking Garage Blues?

You arrived on time and waited more than an hour in a crowded suite before getting your 15 minutes with the doctor. The delay was irritating enough, and you’re late getting back to work. But after handing over a $10 co-payment, you curse as you exit the garage, realizing that the $11 parking space cost more than the office visit!

It’s enough to make you wonder: Should there be managed care for parking?

“If you have the right kind of insurance, it costs you less for surgery than for parking,” joked one Los Angeles patient who sees doctors at several medical centers in high-rent districts.

The medical office towers near Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have the highest parking rates, according to an informal and unscientific survey of parking rates at doctors’ offices near some major Southland hospitals. Rates at the Cedars’ garage--owned not by the hospital but by a Boston real estate concern--rise Everest-like, climbing by $1.65 every 15 minutes. One minute beyond a 1 1/2-hour visit pushes the tariff to the $11 daily limit. To make matters worse, “pretty much none” of the doctors validate parking, according to doctors and parking garage workers.

For all-day parking rates, the garage shared by Century City Hospital and the Century City Medical Plaza, near the 20th Century Fox movie studio and several luxury hotels, tops the list with a $12.50 maximum, starting with $1.25 increments every 15 minutes. Many doctors offer partial validation.

This being Los Angeles, where cars are adored and self-parking often disdained, valet parking at Century City carries no extra charge, although patients should probably bring extra bills to tip the car jockey.

In contrast, Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena offers a parking bargain: $1 a day, with free parking on weekends and holidays; valet parking for $3. St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank charges $1 an hour up to a $4 daily maximum. Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles is 75 cents for each 20 minutes, up to a $4 maximum, and $5 for valet. There are discounts for some patients.

The University of Southern California’s University Hospital gives patients the first hour free and charges $1 for each additional hour, up to $5 a day; valet parking is $7.50. UCLA Medical Center charges a flat $5 per day.

Cindy Wood, a 33-year-old physical therapist in Santa Monica, says the only reason she uses the Century City parking structure is that her internist, Dr. Mitchell Cohen, “gives partial validation, so it’s relatively affordable.” It usually runs her about $3.

Parking Fees Are Hidden Expense

Few people think about parking fees when they consider the costs of medical care. The fees are “sort of a hidden expense. Your insurance policy doesn’t cover it,” says Aileen Harper, director of the Medicare advocacy service at the Center for Health Care Rights in Los Angeles. Expensive parking is particularly tough on patients who are disabled and need to park close by.

The costs can pose a burden for the elderly, who are often on fixed incomes and enrolled in health plans that use doctors located at major medical centers.

The Cedars-Sinai doctors’ offices are “the desired location for a lot of seniors who are on the Westside . . . for whom access to quality health care is the priority,” Harper said. “When you add parking to all the various other kinds of cost-sharing Medicare beneficiaries have to worry about, this is one more thing . . . coming out of their fixed income.”

People, Doctors Are ‘Feeling the Pinch’

Doctors who see Medicare patients and participate in plans that pay them fixed rates also complain of economic pressures.

“People are feeling the pinch. Doctors are feeling the pinch,” says Timothy Aldrete, chief financial officer for Automac, the parking company that manages the Cedars office garage and a facility at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, where parking costs a mere $1 a day. “Real estate is a whole lot less there. The hospital subsidizes the parking . . . to attract doctors and patients,” Aldrete explained.

Cedars’ medical office parking lots are owned by REIT Management, which sees the property purely “as a revenue generator . . . a business,” Aldrete said.

So, if you must use a doctor at an office where parking fees are steep, what can you do?

The Health section has been shuttled among operators, offices and parking attendants with loud music blaring in the background, to get the parking facts so you won’t suffer sticker shock. Just don’t tell anyone The Times told you what to do.

At the doctors’ offices near Cedars, patients might be better off trying hospital parking lots--$1.10 every 20 minutes up to $10 maximum a day. Hospital patients undergoing tests pay a day rate of just $3.30. For patients admitted to the hospital, Cedars offers 24 free hours the day of admission and 24 free hours the day of release. Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center patients pay just $1 or $2 with validation when they come for treatment. (Hospital spokeswoman Anita Roark said the posted rate of $2.20 per 20 minutes at the cancer center was meant to discourage parking by patrons of a nearby restaurant.)

For patients who don’t mind a walk, there are spaces along the south side of Burton Way, where street parking is free for two to four hours. The best-known neighborhood alternative is the Beverly Center shopping mall, where $1 gets you three hours of parking; $3 covers the whole day.

“I always encourage the patients to park at the Beverly Center. I’m even thinking of sending my employees over there,” said Casey Stengel, operations officer for a group of six infectious disease specialists in the Cedars towers who don’t validate parking. “Unfortunately in today’s era of managed care and reduced fee-for-service, (the doctors) just can’t afford it. This practice alone sees somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 new patients ever year. It’s all economics.”

Sharing Space With Shoppers

Beverly Center management is well aware that Cedars patients use its garage, but has no way to differentiate the patients from its other patrons, notes Evette Caceres, the mall’s marketing director. “Many of them are our customers too. They see their doctors, then they shop, eat or see a movie here.”

At Century City Medical Plaza, the building offers patients a break.

“The building will pay for the second hour, not for the first hour,” said Carol Lambert, Cohen’s office assistant. “It’s kind of a courtesy. Sometimes you go to the doctor and you have to wait.”

A building management employee who declined to identify herself said the majority of doctors provides the second hour free, but others offer validation for the first hour “because their patients don’t stick around the second hour.”

Cohen’s office outlines other options: “The legal thing is to park on one of the side streets near Beverly Hills High School, near Spaulding and Olympic. A lot of our patients do that and walk over,” said Lambert. Then, there’s Century City Shopping Center if you’re up to a few minutes’ walk. Or, Lambert says, “have someone drop you out front and pick you up.”

St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica provides 20 free minutes, after which the standard rate is $1.40 for each additional 20 minutes, up to $7 a day for self-parking and $8.40 for valet parking. Patients might check to see if the doctor offers reduced-rate stickers, which hold the cost to $3 for self-parking and $4 for valet parking.

Next door at the Santa Monica Medical Center office towers, the garage operated by Parking Plus charges $1.25 for every 20 minutes up to a maximum of $8.70. About 5% of the doctors validate, estimated supervisor Ricardo Cuellar.

The St. John’s area has some little-known but economical alternatives. Try parking to the south of St. John’s at the 10-hour meters along Broadway from 20th to 23rd streets at 35 cents an hour. To the north of the complex, two-hour meters along Arizona Avenue between 20th and 23rd require 50 cents an hour.

Now here’s an encouraging policy. Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach offers free parking--and free valet service--while it constructs new spaces.

Why free?

“We don’t have an abundance of people trying to use the parking lot for non-hospital-related purposes,” said hospital spokesman Chris Premer. “We don’t feel people who are in the hospital should be charged extra for parking.”