“Madre Teresa di Calcutta” Hospital, a SaMBA Pilot
Increase the use of public transport, contextually reducing the use of the private car, among hospital users
Problem
Due to the presence of a very large free parking area, patients, employees, and students go to the hospital mainly by private car.
Description
“Madre Teresa di Calcutta” Hospital is situated at the border of Este and Monselice in the south of province of Padova: it borders with the province of Rovigo, the province of Venice and the provinces of Vicenza and Verona.
The hospital structure is located on a total surface of 250.000 mqs and it serves an area of users of 46 municipalities or rather 186.000 inhabitants of this area: they constitute 20% of the population of the province of Padova.
The hospital structure provides 450 beds, 10 operating rooms, 1.850 external free parking space.
The structure also hosts the Nursing Course of the University of Padova that involves 200 students and the masters degree “Coordination of the healthcare careers” that involves 48 students.
The main aim of the pilot is increase the use of local public transport services even though there is free car parking area in the hospital.
The main objective is to increase the use of public transport, contextually reducing the use of the private car, among hospital users even though in the Hospital’s area there is free car parking.
The main activities planned for the pilot case were:
- Monitoring and evaluating at the beginning of the pilot;
- Communication among hospital employees during all the project period;
- Engagement of hospital trade unions;
- Surveys on the dissatisfaction of hospital employees and users of the public transports;
- Feedback collection surveys;
- Focus group with PT stakeholders to design targeted rewards and benefit strategies;
- Application of the strategies identified and behaviour change monitoring.
The Province of Padova has carried out an exploratory survey involving potential users and current users of public transport with the specific aim to identify the variables on which to co-create the policies of reward/pricing.
After those surveys, the followin reward/pricing measures were put in place, between October of 2019 and March of 2020:
- Route modification to supply a more constant service between Monselice train station and the hospital
- Introduction of a new fare of 1euro that was valid for 4 hours, for travels with origin or destination to the hospital
To promote those measures, the Province of Padua runned an advertising campaign.
Results
The actions implemented have made it possible to obtain (in comparison with the May 2019 surveys):
- 276 transport users on 31 journeys with an increase of 33% public transport users;
- 20/25 students daily go to the Hospital by bus after their train journey to Monselice railways station (data source: Busitalia Veneto);
- 140 transport users have as origin/destination the hospital with an increase of 2,2%.
Lessons Learned
The results of the adverting campaign highlighted that good information can raise awareness on users and be an effective tool for behaviour change, instead of using financial leverages as moral suasion.
However, to achieve a large scale audience it could be useful a mixed policy, which comprises both informative and financial actions.
Positive feedback was obtained by the students but not by the workers. This has been probably due to the free parking available at the hospital. The necessity to better understand workers’ needs has to be taken into account, to improve the new-targeted policy.
The COVID19 impact
After the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the hospital, all the activities were suspended and made it very difficult for the pilot to follow the natural course of its activities.
However, communication campaings were still being done in the beggining of 2021 to raise awareness for options other than car. In addition to that, a further study about the patterns of mobility from/to the hospital were further analysed and two reports were made.
