Sara Sloman, Chief Strategy Officer at Paythru, argues in that to deliver a successful EV transition across the healthcare estate, healthcare estates and healthcare engineering teams must ‘look beyond the chargepoint itself’, to digital solutions, and how to both maximise user convenience and secure the best return on their investment.
Healthcare estates are looking to a Net Zero future. As set out in the NHSE/I publication, Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health Service, published in October 2020, the NHS is planning to deliver a commendable 80% reduction in emissions by 2045. A major element of this will be supporting the transition to electric vehicles (EV) – whether the organisation’s fleets of cars, bikes, and ambulances, or the vehicles that a growing number of its 1.27 million staff use to travel to work. The NHS is showing its ambition to be a trailblazer in this sphere. As the UK’s largest employer, and home to almost 500,000 car parking spaces, it has an advantage of scale that justifies considerable thought to getting its EV deployment strategy right – a strategy that will impact many, and many others may copy.
Things are certainly happening. The latest figures show that around half (51 per cent) of NHS Trusts have an onsite EV charging infrastructure, and 43 per cent are planning to install charging facilities over the next few years. This comes in the wake of complex and lengthy planning and car park reviews across the country, aimed at reducing single occupancy use on site.
Considerable thought required
This drive toward greater take-up of EVs will only continue as the NHS – as well as private health providers – seek to reduce their carbon footprints, and support staff, patients, and visitors, to do so. Successful EV charging is, however, about so much more than simply getting chargers in the ground. To get the best from them, considerable thought must be given to how they will be used by drivers, and managed by healthcare estates over time, so that they can be designed to be operationally cost-effective throughout their lives.
The benefits of EV chargers
Before we look at the challenges and solutions of deployment, let’s reconsider the value of putting in EV chargers in the first place. Among the key such benefits are:
· Decarbonising your estate: This is the obvious one. Chargers support internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, which can be replaced with cleaner electric ones.
· Employee perks: Staff could be given access to low cost charging as a perk, incentivising them to switch to EVs. Many NHS staff will not have driveways at home, but guaranteed affordable charging at work could offer a significant incentive.
· Greater patient and visitor convenience: Easily accessible car park charging provides added convenience for patients, who can benefit from charging their electric vehicles during the ‘downtime’ of being in hospital or for people visiting.
· Generating extra income: Many chargers could be run at a profit, generating valuable revenue at scale for NHS Trusts
· Positive public perception: ‘Going electric’ demonstrates the health facility’s commitment to promoting sustainability, improving its public image. As community leaders and influencers, hospitals that embrace EV technology will be seen to encourage and motivate others to make the transition to more sustainable futures, reflecting a reputation as responsible and forward-thinking institutions.
· ‘Future-proofing’: By 2030, it is anticipated that there will be between around 8 and 11 million hybrid or electric cars in the UK, if uptake is aligned with the Road to Zero (RTZ) targets. By 2040, the number of hybrid or electric cars could reach 25.5 million. Accommodating the growing EV driver numbers with accessible chargepoints could be highly beneficial for many types of facilities within the healthcare estates sector.
Consider the user experience
Hardware and infrastructure are often the focus in electrification of transport, but lately there has been welcome attention on the opportunity that software can present to unlock the full benefits and capabilities of that hardware. Indeed, beyond getting chargers in the ground, health estate managers need to think about how they want people to interact with, and pay for, the chargepoints. This is often an afterthought, in that they may assume the chargepoint provider will provide an adequate solution. However, that can be an oversight that leads to systems that are not fit for purpose or become redundant over time.
Considering ‘the whole digital experience’
Thinking of the whole digital experience in its own right – in particular the payment – rather than as a bolt-on, can help ensure that charging infrastructure delivers. Think of the user experience as separate – as a digital platform in the cloud that is lifted away from the physical charger. Once you separate the physical from the digital, you open options to meet user needs and evolve as those needs change.
When setting up your EV charging systems on healthcare estates, therefore, we need to think beyond the charger. Much has been written about getting them in the ground, and we won’t revisit that here. However, in ‘getting them in the ground’ our conversations with industry suggest that the following are points that are often overlooked, and Estates managers of all stripes often wish they had thought about them earlier:
· Consider what tariff will work best for you. For instance, how much revenue do you want to generate, or is the goal to incentivise uptake and you simply want to make enough to cover running costs. Will this change over time? Do you want different payment systems and rates for fleets, staff, and visitors? You may even want to set up more complex systems, such as ones where all staff get, say, 10 hours per week at a reduced rate, but then revert to the market rate. This is all very hard to do with physical infrastructure, but it is much easier if the physical charger is only starting and ending the change, and all the data and payment processing exists in a cloud-based software platform, that can be setup and adjusted remotely.
· Being able to set, vary, and update tariffs across your estate will make your life easier, as charging infrastructure expands and needs change. As new legislation aimed at improving the chargepoint experience looms, requiring simple payments, multiple options, and interconnections between different payment schemes, it’s clear that future EV charge point must combine the physical charger with a digital equivalent in the cloud.
· Do you want your own app? Most NHS Trusts will partner with chargepoint operators on deployment, who will usually have their own app through which users can access the chargepoint. However perhaps you also want your own proprietary app – or to upgrade an existing app to allow EV charging. That puts you in control, allowing you to offer multiple services, and collect better data. You may even want separate apps for staff and the public, or a dedicated app for staff, and integration with other widely-used EV chargepoint apps for the public. A cloud-based platform can be the back end for your own payment app, but also allow anyone else’s payment app to integrate, so drivers have options.
· Will you need to handle multi-party payments? A growing user frustration is paying for parking and charging. These can be hard to integrate; especially given that many car parks have existing processes for paying for parking. A payment platform can sit as a layer in between, giving the user a single payment, and then splitting the cost between different parking and EV divisions’ bank accounts. The same goes for any multi-party payment. For example, you may want to manage the chargers yourselves, but you will need to pay the chargepoint operators to install and maintain them. One solution to reduce risk could be a cost-sharing arrangement; that could involve a monthly payment of a percentage of revenue. Once a percentage is agreed, dividing the fee into two separate bank accounts upon payment would reduce a lot of administration.
· Do you want to make your chargers more widely available? There will be times when chargers should be exclusively for staff and visitors, but some locations may have quieter times when chargers could be offered to the general public, or to local fleets to charge up, in order to generate more revenue from your chargepoint investment. This may mean putting them on Zapmap, and setting times when they appear as available, or setting up a separate payment system so that approved third party vehicles can use them at certain times.
Payments ‘not as simple as they seem’
The key learning here is that payments – and the whole user experience that goes with them– are not as simple as they might seem. With so many parts (chargepoints, apps, parking spaces etc.) and players (CPOs, different departments at local authorities), it’s important to embrace technologies that can handle this, and set yourself up to manage infrastructure that will inevitably evolve.
The buzzword in the tech industry is ‘platform’ – in layman’s terms this is the bit that sits in the middle and makes everything else work. Think of Uber. It does not itself provide a physical service; rather it offers a cloud platform that connects drivers and passengers. Both share their data; both have their own version of the app. The platform handles the locating, communication, and payment split, and can change prices and cater for different users’ needs and different times while all being seamless for the user. Similar types of platforms can handle the complex relationships between EV chargepoints, car parks, and drivers.
Retrofitting card readers
It’s also worth mentioning that the proposed retrofitting of contactless card readers onto EV charging hardware by the UK government could have unintended consequences and limitations that could have detrimental effects on the EV industry’s progress, and unforeseen environmental concerns, not just for healthcare estates, but for wider applications too. Government may therefore want to consider including the development of cloud-based and roaming payment systems as an option for payment alongside contactless or as an alternative. Closed networks that require pre-registered membership or exclusivity should be urgently reassessed, as they exclude new users from being able to access vital charging when needed. Cloud-based and roaming payment systems should also become accepted as part of the customer experience alongside contactless, to future-proof the EV industry.
Undoubtedly hospitals, medical centres, and clinics, and their Estates and Facilities managers, can install and manage an efficient charging infrastructure, simultaneously solidifying their commitment to patient care and environmental responsibility. Too often though the sole focus is on getting enough chargers in the ground. This is important, but it should not be done at the expense of a smooth experience for all users. To support their estates to transition to clean mobility, Estates and Facilities managers should carefully consider the different user experiences at the change point, and the role that innovative digital solutions can have in enabling that.
About Paythru and Sara Sloman
Sara Sloman, Chief Strategy Officer, is the driving force behind the strategic direction of Paythru, leveraging her extensive experience in delivering sustainable transport projects in both the private and public sectors over the past two decades. Her expertise enables her to lead the development and implementation of effective EV strategies. In recognition of her contributions to the field, she was honoured as GreenFleet EV Champion in 2018, and has consistently been included on the GreenFleet ‘100 Most Influential’ list since 2019, achieving the number 32 position in 2023. Her dedication to sustainability, ESG, diversity, and inclusion, earned her the Barbara Cox Woman of the Year award in 2023.
Paythru says its ‘highly customisable’ cloud-based payment platform ‘overcomes charging pain points by putting drivers at the centre of the charging experience’. The company said: “By moving the chargepoint payment into our cloud platform, we lift the user experience away from the physical charge point. That allows behind-the-scenes integration with other parties, whilst providing a single clear transaction for the user.”
Read more articles from the Healthcare Facilities Journal Summer 2025
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