‎When it comes to painful hospital parking fees in Ontario, the doctor is on the case.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins says he will “very soon” have a remedy for the exorbitant charges that ail patients and visitors alike.

“We’re working with the OHA (Ontario Hospital Association). We’ve been consulting with the patient advocates and other stakeholders to make sure we get this right,” said Hoskins, an MD and PhD.

“I expect in a very short while we should bring together a policy that will … effectively address the concerns of Ontarians that rightly should be concerned,” he said at Queen’s Park.

In last June’s provincial election, one of the key pledges from Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals was to act on an issue that affects people in every corner of the province.

“We made a platform commitment on the frequent visitors specifically to cap or control,” said Hoskins.

“We’ve been asked to either look at a cap or look at a reduction for those frequent visitors so we’ve been working to define what a frequent visitor is,” the minister said, admitting“it turns out to be more complicated, I think, than a lot of people would necessarily assume.”

“We want to make sure that that doesn’t negatively impact the non-frequent visitors — so they don’t just jack up the prices for everybody else,” he emphasized.

“A big part of the process was to find out what’s going on out there. So we had to reach out to virtually every hospital and find out what they charge and if they do provide exemptions and how much of the revenue toward the hospital is it or does it go to some third party.”

Hoskins’ imminent action is welcomed by Brij Mohan Malik, a paraplegic who goes to the University Health Network’s Lyndhurst Centre three times a week.

“Before, I was paying $70 a year for parking and it went up last fall to $70 a month,” said Malik, 73, who goes to Lyndhurst in evenings for exercise with other paraplegics and quadriplegics.

“We use the equipment after hours at the fitness centre and they’re now charging us the same amount as during business hours. It’s a tough struggle for everybody,” he said.

“If we can’t go, we don’t have the ability to do our exercises.”

In a letter Malik shared with the Star, Lyndhurst officials noted “the decision to raise parking rates was done in order to maintain the parking lot.”

“The rates are at market value for the area and are not downtown rates,” they told him in February.

Interim Progressive Conservative Leader Jim Wilson said most MPPs have been getting an earful about hospital parking from their constituents.

“We get a lot of complaints particularly from my riding that have to come to Toronto hospitals. They’re shocked at the cost of hospital parking,” said the Simcoe-Grey MPP.

“The government is going to have to act,” said Wilson, himself a former health minister. “It’s a barrier to access for a lot of people.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said the high price of hospital parking “is one of those things that really get under people’s skin.”

“It really irritates them, especially when people have loved ones that have serious health problems and are in hospital for a period of time. The loved ones are going there every single day to see their family members and they really have very few choices,” said Horwath.

“We hear it all the time from families. It’s adding insult to injury when families are already feeling vulnerable. They’re trying to scramble to support loved ones.”

Hospitals have long argued that they have no choice but to charge hefty parking levies of $25 a day or more because government funding covers only about three-quarters of their costs.

They point out that services like parking and hospital shops and cafes effectively subsidize health care.

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But in 2011 the Canadian Medical Association Journal editorialized that the charges are user fees, counter to the Canada Health Act, and should be abolished.

The journal maintained “parking-centred health care … is not compatible with patient-centred health care” because someone might leave an appointment early in order to avoid paying for another hour of parking.

“Parking fees are a barrier to health care and add avoidable stress to patients who have enough to deal with. They can and sometimes do interfere with a clinical consultation, reducing the quality of the interaction and therefore of care.”