Michael Patrick <geodes...@gmail.com> writes: > There are international taxonomies that define standards for the various > terms involved in healthcare provision ( like > *https://www.hl7.org/about/index.cfm?ref=nav* > <https://www.hl7.org/about/index.cfm?ref=nav> ). These are important for > many reasons, like Drs Without Borders may draw personnel from many > countries and integrate with local medical staff. For example:
I'm really glad to see you posting definitions from a relevant international professional body. I think in general OSM should pay more attention to such things. As I see things around me, there is hospital urgent care - takes walk ins doctors' office group practice in general practice (perhaps as many as 30 doctors, and may have xray, lab, etc. -- but it's still basically a doctor's office in that you make appointments to see your primary care physician or someone covering for unscheduled needs) doctors' office group practice for a specialty such as eye care single doctor's office (or therapist, etc.) day surgery center (minor surgery and colonoscopy are popular) standalone MRI/CAT-scan facilities and I don't see any of them called clinic in any meaningful way. Some of them may call themselves clinic, but I view this as more or less content free, in that if they simply didn't self-describe that way, nothing that mattered would be any different. So I don't think tagging as clinic is useful, absent a definition that allows separating from group practice in a fundamental kind of way. If it's about having xray, lab, etc., it seems obvious those things should just have extra tags, rather than changing the type. It's possible that there are things that are sort of like doctors' group practice in how they function medically but which take unscheduled patients because of the population they are serving, but I don't see that as changing the main tag - perhaps it deserves a walkins_accepted=yes subtag. I do hear the word clinic used as in The [town name] Medical Reserve Corps will be holding a flu clinic at [community center] on [date/time]. which means they are setting up to provide immunizations in bulk, but this is an event, not a place. _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
