Template talk:Infobox Hospital

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[edit] Oct upgrading

I've applied the styling features of Template:Infobox NHS hospital which allowed for the hospital name in large and section headers. The UK template has a series of location parameters (locale and county), yet this one has just a Location - would not a country parameter be useful ? I've added the necessary code to include the picture (see Cedars-Sinai Medical Center) and added width and caption options. Not sure what is supposed to be done with the Logo image. David Ruben Talk 02:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not yet sure how the articles have been set up to use the template, but Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center (Seattle) set the logo parameter as [[Image:Childrens logo.gif]] whereas I've coded the template to take just Childrens logo.gif (see edit change) David Ruben Talk 02:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal Template:Infobox NHS hospital

I propose that Template:Infobox NHS hospital be merged into this template. There are already some UK NHS hospitals that use this template and not the NHS-specific one. It would be more useful to have just the one hospital template to cover all the likely countries that English speaking editors are likely to add (US, Canada, Ireland, UK, NZ, Australia, South Africa, Caribbean etc). Now I think there are some good additional parameters in the Template:Infobox NHS hospital that should be added to this one and it is clear that this template could do with a country parameter. So I suggest the following by way of preliminary modification before merging in Template:Infobox NHS hospital .

Hospital location

Currently the location parameter is used for local area and state for US hospitals (eg "Washington, DC"). The Template:Infobox NHS hospital currently splits the information into locale (probably equates to County for US) but confusingly displays on the template as 'Place' and county (which in UK equates to State for US). Neither template currently specifies Country.

This is not difficult to amalgamate, being similar to the citation templates that allow 'author' to be defined, or allow 'first' and 'last' names to be defined (likewise 'date' or 'year' and 'month' parameters used). So the template takes either 'Location', or 'Locale' & 'County'.

There is though a compelling reason to split US hospital location details into Locale and State parameter information (see Wiki-Links below).

'Locale' is such an ugly term that in proposal below I've kept location to not disrupt current articles that use this template and added in the optional Region, State & Country parameters. Hence for Royal Free Hospital one would have 'Hampstead, London, England, UK' and for an american hospital perhaps 'Northshore, San Francisco, California, US'. David Ruben Talk 03:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Country

I think though we should consider non-UK/US and allow for a Country code which is appended to the end of the location details. As per other templates and Manual of Style, this should show just the 2-letter international abbreviation (see Template:Drugbox which so marks certain parameters if set).

Wiki-links

Defining the country then allows an additional field to be auto-generated, namely the Wiki-Links parameter seen on Template:Infobox NHS hospital. For UK hospitals this shows a link to 'National Health Service' & 'Hospitals in the United Kingdom' and is therefore a means of abbreviating what might otherwise appear in a 'See also' section.

For US hospitals this would of course link to Category:Hospitals in the United States or, if US hospitals had a distinct State parameter to one of its subcategories. Only problem I can foresee in the coding is that Category:Hospitals in the United States has only 39 sub-cats, and last time I looked the US had rather more states than this - still this is not hard to code with parser functions (i.e. to sub-cat if one exists else to the overall 'Category:Hospitals in the United States').

Organisation

UK NHS hospitals are part of NHS Trusts which may have more than one hospital in the group. The UK NHS template allows this trust to be defined. Clearly 'NHS Trust' applies only to UK, but presumably private hospitals may belong to a larger company. I suggest the best generic term would be Organisation' or Group organisation or Group which should be self explanatory for editors adding details about hospitals in a variety of countries. (Group is shorter and avoids organisation/organization American/British English conflict, buit is less descriptive - which do other editors prefer?).

In the end I opted for Org/group as encompases what is sought but is also abbreviated for space and allowing the parameters to be aligned neatly. David Ruben Talk 03:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Type

UK hospitals divide between NHS or Private, in US I guess you have Private/Medicare/Charity ? Likewise we split NHS hospitals into Community, District General, or Teaching Hospitals.

In the proposal I've add in 'Description' that combines Category (for 'Private', 'Public' (or 'NHS' in UK), 'Charity') and Type (to indicate 'General' ('District General' in UK), 'Teaching', 'Community' etc). Do people have thoughts on alternative more elegant terminology for these parameters ? David Ruben Talk 03:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Affiliation

Affiliation = for US hospitals is used for University association, not sure quite the term that we would use in UK, but clear enough not to warrant any adjustment.

Certification

Certification = US has clearly defined "Levels" of emergency trauma care. The terminology is foreign to us Brits, the UK template allows for definition of A&E (ED) present or not and also has a Type parameter to define as Community (generally without A&E and often for outpatient only with no inpatient care), District General (which would have an A&E) and Teaching hospital (which would have higher level of surgical sub-specialism).

To make any sort of sense for UK hospitals, again alternative parameter definition would need be allowed (perhaps triggered by the country code being set to UK). The options are:

  1. Rename this parameter - e.g. to "Trauma level" or "Trauma and ED". This is going to be objected to by everyone - for US hospitals this means editing each article in turn replacing the parameter name, whilst UK editors ,might then know what the parameter is about, it would still not be obvious how to assign meaningful values to the parameter.
  2. Leave the parameter name unchanged - but is meaningless to UK and possibly other non-US editors.
  3. Provide an alternative parameter 'A&E', which if defined substitutes for 'Certification' - the coding is relatively easy and keeps US & UK editors happy in knowing what on earth the template is defining.
I opted in the proposal to use Emergency as the alternative paramenter ('Emergency department and trauma level provision' is what is meant but far too wordly and long). If the country parameter has been set as 'US', then setting this parameter to 'I', 'II' or 'III' will provide the correct link (eg to Level I trauma center etc). David Ruben Talk 03:21, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Clearly there are several tweaks and alternative-parameters in my proposal for merger. The template coding I can easily do and would leave current US hospital pages unaffected, but would allow UK hospitals to be ported across to this template. It would also give scope for hospitals in other countries to make use of the single hospital template in English wikipedia. Do editors have thoughts on these ideas ? :-) David Ruben Talk 01:12, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


I've been bold and added a Country parameter - it recognises certain 2-letter code or country names (see template description). David Ruben Talk 02:17, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I have mixed feelings on the merge proposal but in balance I favour it. The advantages are pretty clear. The snag as I see it is that so much localisation would be required (based on the selected country) that this template would effectively act as different templates for different countries, thus having little advantage over maintaining separate templates. Overall I'm happy with the merge, though, provided that we don't lose key fields from the NHS template and we don't end up with fields that don't make sense for NHS hospitals appearing when we don't want them to. Waggers 14:11, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Following Waggers' reasoning, I'm against the merger: the different countries (particularly the UK and US) have very different hospital systems, political priorities and terminology - so keep them separate, with articles explaining the terms used. Servant of Maleldil 12:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Upgraded this template last night. Although this templates name is not Infobox Hospital (US), I appreciate that english wikipedia mostly has US & Canadian hospital articles currently using this template. So, as you will see, I have been careful with the upgrading to ensure that almost no alternation to what previously included, some slightly better termed or displayed items (eg "Affliaction" to "Affiliated Med.Sch.") and indeed it now will automatically generate a link to List of hospitals in State if one provides the appropriate US State name.
The old Certification parameter currently gets used for all sorts of things other than just the Trauma level certification it was intended for (and that is in articles on US/Canadian hospitals, let alone what articles on hospital in other countries have interpreted this for). The newer Emergency parameter takes just 'I', 'II' or 'III' to provide a link to the appropriate wikiarticle, for other countries takes just 'Yes' or 'No' as to whether the hospital has a E.D. or not (UK and few other countries tweak is to then show additioal term of "Accident & Emergency").
The only really new features are 'Standards' which is a totally optional field for hospitals in developing countries who use external Quality Control Standards for the hospital as a whole (vs US system based on level of trauma care), and I've converted the UK NHS templates 'Hospital Trust', which was very UK-centric into a generic Org/Group which would apply for larger chains of hospitals elsewhere eg see Montreal General Hospital which is part of a group of 5 hospitals( this change) or Aga Khan Hospitals.
As for what happens to articles about UK hospitals, Birmingham Children's Hospital already used this template and with the templae upgrade the only "special" features are that the Health care system is described not just as Public but also as NHS. The Health care system parameter is applicable to US/Canada as it allows one to specify the hospital as Private, Public, Charity Hospital or the relevant Medicare system.
The real issue for articles currently using the Template:Infobox NHS hospital is less about any new features, but rather that the parameter names need a capital 1st letter. As can be seen in the demonstration of changes to UK hospitals in my demonstation there is little real need for a separate UK template, and it converts across to this generic template very well. David Ruben Talk 13:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

So proposal for additional or renamed parameters is as shown (I've rearranged order of some elements of the two infoboxes to give the sequence structure set out in the first column, generally current InfoBox Hospital template parameters kept, but 'Certification' whilst will be kept for backwards compatability, should be depreciated in favour of less US-centric "Emergency" parameter. Feel free to propose tweaked names, eg "Emergency&Trauma")

Structural
Element		 Current Template Updated Infobox Hospital
Infobox Hospital Infobox NHS hospital From existing New or renamed Examples of values for new parameters
Heading Name hospital name Name . .
Images Image image Image . .
Caption . Caption . .
Width . Width . .
Logo . Logo . .
Location Location locale Location . .
. county . Region .
. . . State US=State, UK=England, Wales, Scotland or N.Ireland. Allows for wiki-link section to automatically try to link to Lists of hospitals in <State> (if no such list then will link to that for <Country>. This currently only seems apply to US & UK, but could also apply to Canada & Australia)
. . . Country .
Classification . Trust . Org/Group UK = the NHS Trust, for private (& thus US) name of private company
. . . Category UK=NHS/Private, Elsewhere Public/Private
. type . Type UK=Community, District General, Teaching, Maternity, Speciality
Speciality . Speciality . .
Certification A&E . Emergency UK= Yes/No, US=I/II/III and shows link to appropriate classification
Other info Affiliation . Affiliation . .
Beds in patients Beds . .
Dates Founded opened Founded . .
. . . Closed .
Links Website website Website . .
. Wiki-Links . Wiki-Links These include autogenerated list links to relevant State (UK means England Wales, Scotland or N.Ireland) for UK & US, otherwise to Country


This would give the following overall structure:

{{Infobox Hospital
| Name       = {{PAGENAME}}
| Image      = 
| Caption    = 
| Width      = 
| Logo       = 
| Location   = <!-- ---  Move US State details to the Region parameter -->
| Region     = <!-- NEW. UK: the County or city. US: City or County -->
| State      = <!-- NEW. UK: England, Wales, Scotland, N.Ireland. US: US State abbreviations (used in autogenerated Wiki-links) -->
| Country    = <!-- NEW. -->
| Org/Group  = <!-- NEW. UK: for NHS=Trust or Private company. US: Company organisation or group -->
| Category   = <!-- NEW. UK:NHS or Private. US: Public or Private -->
| Type       = <!-- NEW. Community, District General, Teaching, Specialist -->
| Speciality = 
| Emergency  = <!-- New. UK: Yes/No, US: Trauma certification level (I/II/III) - 'Certificsation' depreciated but kept for compatability -->
| Affiliation= 
| Beds       = 
| Founded    = 
| Closed     = <!-- NEW. -->
| Website    = 
| Wiki-Links = <!-- NEW. Template will automatically add 'List on hospitals in...' link for State or Country if defined -->
|}}

David Ruben Talk 04:18, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


To see working examples of how this might look for NHS and US articles, plus how the upgrade would affect existing articles, please see User talk:Davidruben/Templates/Test1. As you will see, it has little real change to existing articles, but offers scope for wider usage, auto-generates wikilinks to location detail and also adds 'See also' links automatically. There is a little rearranging of the order of items (I've tried to put organisation info together before a more patient-orientated services section) David Ruben Talk 18:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Certification of hospital vs just Trauma provision

Abridged from discussion thread with Aylahs: David Ruben Talk 00:26, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Aylahs I see you have expanded the range of countries that Template:Infobox Hospital recognises - thank you. I am curious, in for example The Aga Khan Hospital for Women, Karimabad what does "ISO 9001: 2000" mean under Classification - is this to do with emergency/trauma provision or a quality standard to the hospital as a whole? The upgraded Template will be replacinmg "Classification" for something along the lines of "Emerg.Dept." So I need to know if we need to provide some additional "Quality Standard" parameter for the articles you have recently created... Yours David Ruben Talk 23:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

The ISO 9001:2000 certification is a quality management standard established by the International Organization for Standardization (You can learn more about it at the ISO website.) It would apply to the hospital as a whole. For a hospital in the developing world it is an important certification of quality, particularly given the general absence of credible quality standards or bodies in developing countries.
I'm not sure what the best way is to fit the certification into the new version of your template, but I agree that it would be important to differentiate between country specific certifications and international ones. Also, perhaps the term certification is too general for the US trauma level?
Hope this helps. Aylahs 00:00, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree poor choice of term for US hospital trauma/emergency provision, although their hospitals are externally assessed for this provision and a certification awarded to the hospital. However too many US hospitals currently use this parameter in this fashion and so I will need to leave the item as a depreciated alternative to "Emergency" (or "Emerg.Dept."). What we need then is a new parameter of "QualityStandard" or "QualityControl" or "Standards" (can you think of a better name) that would take any such ISO certification of the hospital as a whole. David Ruben Talk 00:26, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
This would give the parameters list to be something along the lines of:David Ruben Talk 00:37, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
{{Infobox Hospital
| Name       = {{PAGENAME}}
| Org/Group  = <!-- NEW. for NHS=Trust/Health board (UK NHS) or Private Company organisation or group -->
| Image      = 
| Caption    = 
| Width      = 
| Logo       = 
| Location   = <!-- ---  Move US State details to the Region parameter -->
| Region     = <!-- NEW. UK: the County or city. US: City or County -->
| State      = <!-- NEW. UK: England, Wales, Scotland, N.Ireland. US: US State abbreviations (used in autogenerated Wiki-links) -->
| Country    = <!-- NEW. -->
| Category   = <!-- NEW. UK:NHS or Private. US: Public or Private -->
| Type       = <!-- NEW. Community, District General, Teaching, Specialist -->
| Speciality = 
| Standards  = <!-- NEW. e.g. international ISO where absence of national standards -->
| Emergency  = <!-- NEW. UK: Yes/No, US: Trauma certification level (I/II/III) - 'Certificsation' depreciated but kept for compatability -->
| Affiliation= 
| Beds       = 
| Founded    = 
| Closed     = <!-- NEW. -->
| Website    = 
| Wiki-Links = <!-- NEW. Template will automatically add 'List on hospitals in...' link for State or Country if defined -->
|}}
  • India Could you take a look too at what might work for Indian hospitals, like Apollo Hospitals? There's the beginning (?) of JCI accreditation which, if nothing else, is at least handy for establishing some kind of notability for hospitals. Mereda 15:24, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I would not change the Infobox Company template used on Apollo Hospitals, as the article is about a company, rather than any specific hospital. Similarly the Infobox Hospital would be inappropriate on the UK BUPA or indeed the National Health Service articles - yet all of these run large number of hospitals. David Ruben Talk 00:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Whoops. What I was thinking about really was whether JCI was worth using more systematically with hospital infoboxes (and that Apollo article, even though a company, is probably the first to mention the JCI's two levels of accreditation). Mereda 07:54, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah. Yes I suppose JCI verification (hospitals has to invite the inspection team in) of note, and appropriate for the 'Standards' parameter proposed (please do not put under 'Certification' as seems this has historic use in template only for traumatology accreditation). That said I note the conflict of interest problems cited about the main US body Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, whose worldwide mission is the JCI, but presumeably some problematic monitoring is better than none.
I'm still not sure 'Standards' is the best choice of name for this - can you suggest a better worded term ? I hope to upgrade the template in next 1-2 days :-) David Ruben Talk 13:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Funding

The Public/Private/Charity status would perhaps be best served by a parameter that links to to the article Health care system. So "Category" seems a poorer choice of parameter name than perhaps "HealthCare" (would "Funding" be better ?). I can get the coding to recognised for the UK "NHS" to show "Public NHS" and for US "Charity" to link to Charity care. It is nearing the end of consultation period over template upgrade - so any thoughts ? David Ruben Talk 16:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

This would give the parameters list to be something along the lines of:David Ruben Talk 18:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
{{Infobox Hospital
| Name       = {{PAGENAME}}
| Org/Group  = <!-- NEW. for NHS=Trust/Health board (UK NHS) or Private Company organisation or group -->
| Image      = 
| Caption    = 
| Width      = 
| Logo       = 
| Location   = <!-- ---  Move US County/City & State details to Region & State parameters -->
| Region     = <!-- NEW. UK & US: the County or City -->
| State      = <!-- NEW. UK: England, Wales, Scotland, N.Ireland. US: The US State (used in autogenerated Wiki-links) -->
| Country    = <!-- NEW. -->
| HealthCare = <!-- NEW. UK:NHS. AU/CA: Medicare. US:Medicare/Medicaid/Charity. ELSE freetext, eg Private -->
| Type       = <!-- NEW. Community, District General, Teaching, Specialist -->
| Speciality = <!--      Only if particularly notable or state as "Teaching" -->
| Standards  = <!-- NEW. e.g. international ISO where absence of national standards -->
| Emergency  = <!-- NEW. UK: Yes/No, US: Trauma certification level (I/II/III) - 'Certificsation' depreciated but kept for compatability -->
| Affiliation= <!--      University or Medical School association -->
| Beds       = 
| Founded    = 
| Closed     = <!-- NEW. -->
| Website    = <!-- ---  As http://www..... add optional <Space> followed by display text, 'homepage' is added to this -->
| Wiki-Links = <!-- NEW. Template will automatically add 'List on hospitals in...' link for State or Country if defined -->
|}}

[edit] Last call for comment

I would appreciate comment on choice of parameter names, e.g. 'HealthCare' vs. Funding, alternatives to 'Standards' (applies to developing countries with external accreditation certification), 'Region' vs Area (i.e. County, but this does not apply outside of UK & US). In the next day or so, I shall implement the changes (see demonstration)... David Ruben Talk 03:06, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


From Kerowyn's and my own talk pages, I copy the following:David Ruben Talk 03:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest. I've wanted to make up a better template, but I don't really have the programming skills to do it properly. I've taken a look at the proposal and it looks good to me. I've copied the proposed template over here, and added my comments Kerowyn Leave a note 02:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

{{Infobox Hospital
| Name       = {{PAGENAME}}
| Image      = 
| Caption    = 
| Width      = 
| Logo       = 

| Location   = <!-- ---  Move US State details to the Region parameter -->
| Region     = <!-- NEW. UK: the County or city. US: City or County -->
| State      = <!-- NEW. UK: England, Wales, Scotland, N.Ireland. US: US State abbreviations (used in autogenerated Wiki-links) -->
| Country    = <!-- NEW. -->

I think these parameters could be combined into one, since "Location" generally includes city and state/county by default. 

| Org/Group  = <!-- NEW. UK: for NHS=Trust or Private company. US: Company organisation or group -->

I feel like this entry and "Affiliation" are basically the same thing, so they could be combined.

| Category   = <!-- NEW. UK:NHS or Private. US: Public or Private -->
| Type       = <!-- NEW. Community, District General, Teaching, Specialist -->
| Speciality = 

| Emergency  = <!-- New. UK: Yes/No, US: Trauma certification level (I/II/III) - 'Certificsation' depreciated but kept for compatability -->

It isn't necessary to keep the "certification" title here, since trauma levels are generally descriptive of emergency services. 

| Affiliation= 
| Beds       = 
| Founded    = 
| Closed     = <!-- NEW. -->
| Website    = 
| Wiki-Links = <!-- NEW. Template will automatically add 'List on hospitals in...' link for State or Country if defined -->
|}}


Thanks for comments. Additional location parameters would be optional and allow for the template code to apply automatic wikilinks and List of Hospitals in .... In UK a single Medical School may make use of hospitals from a number of different NHS Trust organisations, and not all of an NHS Trust's facilities will be involved in student training - so there is no automatic 1-to-1 equivalence. Classification parameter re US emergency/trauma level will indeed need to be dropped entirely in due course. :-) David Ruben Talk 03:00, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  1. re splitting location: this will allow the template to automatically wikify State and Country if the wikipedia articles exist (in UK this would be to England, Wales or Scotland, and in the US to the relevant US State). Furthermore the wikilinks at the end will automatically include a link to List of Hospitals in State if this exists, otherwise to List of Hospitals in Country if that exists. Hence splitting location allows the template to generate a series of links automatically and to the lowest subcategory of the Lists. That said, Location parameter remains unlinked (unless so defined by an article) and the proposal only absolutely requires Location and Country to be given; State & Region are optional to allow for current usage compatability.
  2. re Org/Group and (Medical School) Affiliation: these are not the same thing in the UK. Hence in London, we have Kings College Hospital, St Thomas' Hospital & Guys Hospital which all previously had their own Medical Schools, these are now merged into that of King's College university. However the actual hospitals are run by differing NHS Trusts (Kings is one and then Thomas' & Guys is the other) and each of these trusts has additional health centres and community hospitals which generally are purely service provision (i.e. little or no medical school training activity).
  3. re Certification: I agree should be dropped. I'll initially though leave it in as an alternatie to keep articles that use the template looking correct, until such time as I can work through these articles to upgrade their use of the newer template. Then I'll drop this parameter entirely. David Ruben Talk 02:54, 26 November 2006 (UTC)


Okay. I didn't realize that about the locations automatically linking back the the appropriate list. Perhaps the Affliation parameter should be expanded to say "Medical School Affiliation" just so its clear?
Just as long as the trauma center level is listed somewhere, since that's a main index of quality for American hospitals. Kerowyn Leave a note 03:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes I will need take care to make it clear how the template functionality works (Likewise if Country is UK and Category=NHS then 'Public NHS' will be shown).
I presume you refer to a clarified item header of "Medical School Affiliation", rather than expanding the existing paramerter name. Certainly can do (as a non-US, it was not immediately apparent to me what this meant too)- would be nice to fit it on one line, so perhaps "Med.Sch.assoc." or "Affiliated Med.Sch." (I prefer the latter). David Ruben Talk 18:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Just found article University hospital which are hospitals affiliated to medical schools or universities. The article Teaching hospital seems to be US-specific in that it applies to hospitals with undergraduate and/or postgraduate training, whereas here in the UK all public hospitals will have post-graduate junior doctors in training under the top level of Consultants (Residents I think in the US) but we would reserve "Teaching" hospital to imply those select few hospitals that also train medical students. Hence only in private practice would consultants alone be treating patients. David Ruben Talk 19:16, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Upgraded

Template upgraded, with rewrite of explanation on use. Some minor tweaks (if hospital HealthCare and Type both left undefined, Unknown is shown on a compressed single line). Display changed from "Affiliation" to "Affliated Med.Sch." as some articles were using this to link to the name of a group of hospitals rather than Medical Schools (groups of hospitals should use the Org/Group parameter), also "Emerg.Dept." expanded a little in the extra spece provided to "Emergency Dept."

If there are any questions regarding the explanation of the template, or apparent errors in the coding, please ask :-) David Ruben Talk 05:27, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Nicely done! --Arcadian 05:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HealthCare parameter & Canadian Healthcare

I'm still trying to work out some specifics for some of the additional features I added to the template, see User_talk:Dhodges#Canadian_Healthcare. For the UK, I expect all public hospitals will point to the overall NHS rather than to NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, Health and Care NI. Likewise do you think it would be better, especially given that 8 out of the 10 locally named Provincal Medicare schemes are red-links, for all Canadian hospitals to point to just Medicare (Canada), rather than just a few being able to point to say Ontario Health Insurance Plan ? (If HealthCare='Medicare' it will point to the correct page for Australia/Canada/US). David Ruben Talk 09:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it would for now. Is there any easy way to have it go to OHIP for Ontario, and a general term for all the ones that are red links? --ArmadilloFromHell 14:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes possible - of course I presume not all hospitals in Ontario are part of Medicare (there must be some private hospitals), so yes if parameter set to Medicare then can get it to link. This is not too difficult for Canada with its 10 provinces and just 2 that have specific articles to link with. David Ruben Talk 15:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually, there are no private for-profit hospitals in the Canadian system. There are a few private non-profits, such as the Shouldice Hernia Centre or those run by the Salvation Army, but all hospitals have to participate in medicare. -Dhodges 00:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
On a Canada-related note, could we change the country code that signifies a hospital is in Canada? Canadians don't generally recognize the two-letter country code CA as designating Canada (that abbreviation is usually assumed to mean California, perhaps they get to claim it because there are more people in California than in Canada.) Can we just change it to "Canada"? CaseInPoint 18:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Not difficult/problem, just trying to abbreviate and keep location details brief, so Ok will switch.David Ruben Talk 18:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! CaseInPoint 05:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Affiliation parameter - to what should it apply ?

I know you did several calls for comment & I didn't but I've just noticed the affiliated link says "Afilliated med schools" but several seem to link to schools of nursing & allied health - is there any way we can take Med. out of the link?— Rod talk 16:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course it can be, I'm not entirely sure it should be - the parameter seems to have been generally used for medical school links only until now, but yes hospitals & healthcare run as much on trained doctors as trained nurses. What does need to be clear, I think, is that this has been for training links, otherwise the parameter may get used for commercial affiliation (eg of a Pharmaceutical company having an association with the the hospital), but "Affiliated training" is too lengthy to fit on a single line. Yet does this addition to Frenchay Hospital suggest that any healthcare training (be it social workers, psychologists, dietitians etc etc) are to be linked, either using this parameter or by any other means in hospital articles? Hmmmm... what do other people think ? David Ruben Talk 02:47, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
We should definitely avoid the use of "medical" as it excludes non-medical health professions such as nursing. "University" would work well as a label; are there any objections to that? Waggers 12:29, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Just need ensure end up with a phrase that both fits the limited space (single line preferable) and also meaningfulto those outside of the US. In UK we would talk about Medical Schools rather than University in medical training, and perhaps "attachment" rather than "Affiliation" (but we would understand this with the extra pointers of "Affiliated Med.Sch."). "Affiliated University" I suspect will not mean much to most British readers. So I've got no copmplaint re linking university training tie-ins, just not sure on best terminology & header to display for the template David Ruben Talk 20:05, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Hmmm - given that most teaching hospitals in the UK belong to organisations named Mytown University Hospitals NHS Trust, I would have thought that "Affiliated university" would make sense in that context. After all, most (if not all) UK medical schools are part of a university, usually containing schools of nursing and allied health professionals too. It's important that we move away from the exclusive "medical" term. We could use "HEI" (higher education institution) which is well understood in the UK, but this may make the template too UK-centric as I'm not sure if this term is used elsewhere. "Education provider" may be too long. Waggers 20:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Yuck - no general British reader will know what "HEI" means, horrible term :-( You are of course correct as to what the UK teaching hospitals are tending to call themselves (i.e. University Hospitals), but the general public and most doctors would refer to them as "Teaching hospitals", but this is to digress :-) Unless someone comes up with something inspired, "Affiliated university" is definitely best of options so far, and only expands width of the template by about 1.5 characters. Would be nice to have now some comments from other editors before we implement this. David Ruben Talk 22:55, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree, we need some wider concensus. Just to note though that "uni" is a very widely understood abbreviation for "university" if space is the issue. Waggers 10:32, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks all, as the one who started this I agree we need to avoid medicine & place similar value on the training of nurses, allied health professionals etc. I think "Affiliated University" is a good option - but some of our local hospitals eg the Frenchay Hospital example used earlier, have medical students from one university & nursing & allied health from another - so is there any way to cope with plurals for the Uni?— Rod talk 11:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
It's not just medical schools that are affiliated to hospitals - nursing, physiotherapy etc are all degree courses in the UK too. I say change this to University Affiliation or something similar - without the full stops which make the template look poor. I also think the text size should be reduced similar to other templates such as Template:Infobox University. rying to fit all countries' health systems into one template may be too much! PMJ 22:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) Ok this point been open for a month now and time to make some conclusions and enact. So, to rephrase to allow other than just medical association, and term "Affiliated University" seems have the widest support with just single comment eitherway re abbreviating "University" to "Uni.". Let me know what you think seeing this change live in article space :-) David Ruben Talk 01:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Good job, much better in my opinion. Waggers 18:57, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Website coding

My thanks go to Alfakim (see User_talk:Alfakim#Templates and parameter for external link, problem with "=" in URL). In case anyone wonders what the problem was, the {{{Website}}} parameter worked well for normal URL addresses. However no value was effectively passed if the URL address contained an "=" as part of a query to show a specific page within a website (eg http://www.cht.nhs.uk/index.php?id=53). The "=" of the parameter value would be interpreted as an assignment operation within the template coding, this all resulted in {{{Website}}} failling to return any value and a blank field would be shown. See Alfakim's re-coding that has sorted out this problem - again many thanks. David Ruben Talk 03:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speciality default

Currently the Speciality parameter is described as "Used where the hospital is primarily devoted to a particular medical or surgical speciality (i.e. not if it has a broad spectrum of specialities and one happens to be more famous than the rest)". But if there is no speciality of special notability (i.e. it has the usual range of fields of medicine/surgey that any general hospital might be expected to have), then this parameter being undefines displays "unknown". This seems incorrect as it is not "unknown" whether the hospital is primarily devoted to particular specialities - but rather it is known that this is not the case.

Also see this edit to Addenbrooke's Hospital, where an editor specified that the hospital provides a range of services, whilst this is true, it is not what this parameter was originally intended for.

Options are:

  • Change of default display to "None" or "None of special notability" - but failure to define the parameter may indeed be due to an editor not having been able to find out whether there is or is not a primary devotion to particular specialities.
  • Add in the template guide to be copied & pasted into articles a < ! - - ... - - > message explaininmg that the parameter is not to list out the range of specialities provided by teh hospital but only indicate if teh hospital is devoted to a single speciality or has a speciality of national notability (leaving unmentioned that the hospital may have other non-notable routine services). However this does not alter editors coming to hospital articles already containing this template as to this use of "speciality" as a parameter.

My preference is to have default display as "None of special notability" as this will indicate to editors coming to existing articles using the template that this parameter is not to be used to insert lists of routine speciality services provided by most General Hospitals. This I have implemented, but comments welcome :-) David Ruben Talk 02:46, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

An alternative default display might be a more positive phrased "General range of services" or something similar.David Ruben Talk 02:52, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
My preference would be to omit the field altogether from articles on general hospitals, so that it's only displayed for specialist hospitals. Waggers 20:47, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes a reasonable option - anyone else care comment before I so recode ? David Ruben Talk 03:17, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Waggers. Your second option is better. The default should be blank, not unknown. Cmcnicoll 19:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tertiary services ?

Doest this mean that Cardiothoracic surgery and Neurosurgery should be included in Specialty if the hospital is a tertiary referral centre? PMJ 22:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, yes an important distinction that the current Infobox directions perhaps fails to adequately cover. As it currently stands, the guidance would seem to imply that a hospital providing the normal range of general hospital services plus perhaps a regional or tertiary super-speciality should not so use the Speciality parameter - the hospital is a "General Hospital that happens to have some specific notable sub-specialities" within it, rather than that the hospital as a whole is a "Specialist Hospital that fails to provide a broad range of services".
  • Additional point in favour of this strict definition is that many UK general hospitals would perform emergency Cardiothoracic or even Neurosurgery surgery onsite if required, even though routine operations might be concentrated at just one District General Hospital in a region.
  • Against this strict interpretation might be a General Hospital which has within its grounds a secure psychiatric inpatient unit - clearly not something provided in the UK by other District General Hospitals, and which would therefore be a notable fact about the services provided by the hospital in question.
This is an issue with fine distinctions and unless a clear and firm consensus can be reached, risks inconsistency on how this parameter and the Infobox is used across large numbers of articles.
Would we be better to maintain "Speciality parameter" purely for use if the hospital is a Speciality hospital (i.e. not providing general range of services) and, following Waggers' suggestion be entirely hidden for hospitals not having "Type parameter" set as "speciality". Instead should we offer a new parameter shown only for other "Type parameter" settings (i.e."general" or "teaching") for areas of particular notability. Care would be needed with accompanying guidance, else supporters for each hospital might try and claim almost every field of healthcare as excelling. I think, as you suggest, this would need to be restricted to tertiary referral or regional services e.g. regional Cardiothoracic, Neurosurgery, renal dialysis etc and specifically not for services typically found in most District General hospitals.
Such a parameter might be named "Tertiary services", but might be of clearer purpose if named "Additional services", "Regional&Tertiary services", "Super-specialities" or "General with tertiary". My tuppence preference is for "Regional&Tertiary services", further thoughts anyone  ? David Ruben Talk 01:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Additional information

Is it possible to add "Motto" to the infobox for hospitals? How should mottos be dealt with? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jonnny7 (talk • contribs) 13:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC).

  • I agree. I know of hospitals in US that have mottos. Cmcnicoll 19:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] hCard Microformat

I would like us to add the hCard microformat (see also Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats) to this template. I can advise on the required mark-up, but I'm not familiar with template code editing. Andy Mabbett 12:24, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Whilst I can help with template writing, I'm afraid I'm clueless as to what hcard mark-up actual entails (and the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats is just plain confusing listing just possible templates for inclusion, but giving no details as to what the proposed additional markup would be.) Has such fundamental linkage/machine readable data proposal been mentioned and agreed widely (eg at WP:Village pump, Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates or m:Help:HTML_in_wikitext?) I understood that use of div tags was generally to be avoided to help ensure compatibility and easy reading of the wikitext in different browsers (see also Span and div#Possible overuse), but perhaps I have misunderstood ? David Ruben Talk 02:19, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) Taking your points one by one:

  • "Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats is just plain confusing [...] giving no details as to what the proposed additional markup would be" - I haven't listed the mark-up, because it's described on the externally-linked spec, on the microformats wiki (and on the cheatsheets on that site, particularly); and on the hCard article on Wikipedia
  • "Has such fundamental linkage/machine readable data proposal been mentioned and agreed widely (eg at WP:Village pump, Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates or m:Help:HTML_in_wikitext?)'" - it's at the former, but I wasn't aware of the other two; I'll do so now.
  • "I understood that use of div tags was generally to be avoided" - microformats can be applied to any element, DIV is generally simply used for illustration.

Thanks, Andy Mabbett 09:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

Shall I put on a parameter for organisation/organization, so the Australian, Kiwi, South African, British, Irish and/or Candian Organisations can use -s- and American and/or Canadian Organizations can use -z-? Bennelliott • Talk • Contributions 19:50, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

No. Firstly I do not think required under wikipedia's general rule of not altering between various versions of English - and as this template's major upgrade was set up under British English, so it should remain :-) Secondly there would be no need anyway for any additional parameter - the template already provides for the 'Country' parameter (and the necessary coding is easy from this if consensus were for this feature). David Ruben Talk 01:56, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
If it was originally set up as BrE, then why is it spelt with a z? Surely thats En-OED?
I would say yes to the original question. (I also think it should say "NHS trust" instead of organisation/organization (ugh)) for NHS hospitals, and also list the SHA they belong to.) The more dynamic we make the template the better. At the moment, I shudder every time I see it on a UK hospital article because of the incorrect spelling (and the inconsistencies that causes within any such article). With templates we should consider the articles they're going to be in rather than the history of the template itself - but in any case as the unsigned post says, if the major upgrade was under Commonwealth English as David says it was, then it should be "organisation" not "organization". Waggers 14:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

"If it was originally set up as BrE, then why is it spelt with a z? Surely thats En-OED?" Yeah, it doesn't look very good on Commonwealth pages, like Dorset County Hospital for example, and it would be more consistent with the manual of style for each article, and it's only a very simple bit of syntax - I'd be glad to do it. Bennelliott • Talk • Contributions 16:37, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok folks :-) I'll code it for relevant organisation/organization version of English. re Waggers query, re "NHS Trust" instead of organisation/organization, no I think it should remain as organisation/organization:
  • This section is not just about which Organisation the hospital belongs to, but rather is about the organisational structures the hospital operates under (i.e. organisation with a lowercase "o" if you get my meaning, except of couse capitalised as start of sentance).
  • So the details provided will, for UK NHS hospitals, already have displayed "NHS Trust" in the previously displayed 'Org/Group' defined parameter.
  • And the 'HealthCare' parameter will then be defining the hospital as being part of the NHS (term wikilinked).
  • Also the section gives details on hospital university affiliation, but the affiliation is not with the NHS Trust as a whole (some hospitals in an NHS trust might not have any medical students present, whilst others may be teaching hospitals)
  • Finally it can not be set by simple programing on basis of country alone, as not all UK hospitals are part of NHS trusts (i.e we do have some private hospitals too, in which case teh organisation details are that the 'Healthcare'=Private).David Ruben Talk 17:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Forgot, also the hospital type (DGH or specialist tertiary centre) applies to the specific hospital, not to the whole NHS Trust which might have several different hospitals in its group. David Ruben Talk 17:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Good man! :D Bennelliott • Talk • Contributions 17:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bug

Can anyone see what was wrong with this edit, which broke the template? (I've reverted, but left my changes in the documentation, in the hope that this can be remedied quickly) Andy Mabbett 14:01, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The closing span tag split the closing curly brackets. See this correction. Now that it works, can you explain what the "infobox vcard" does compared to the previous "infobox" alone and enlighten me as to what the span class="fn org" is for ? David Ruben Talk 16:45, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Ah just seen the changes at bottom of /doc... still don't quite get of of that... will ponder further ... David Ruben Talk 16:49, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Can you explain what the various "adr" "county-name" "fn" "label" "locality" "nickname" "note" "org" "vcard" are for, how they are used etc - Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats and Microformat really give no clear description of this or explanation of how to use. Indeed does this wikiproject aim's have the support of the wider community and Meta-Wiki? David Ruben Talk 16:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the fix. "vcard" is the parent class of hCard; I think you'll find what you're looking for on that page. There are already tens-, if not hundreds-, of thousands of Microformat on Wikipedia. Andy Mabbett 18:37, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coordinates

Would anyone object to having the coordinates display in the infobox when entered as "latitude" & "longitude", as they currently do if entered as "coordinates"? Andy Mabbett 10:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes - not for having co-ord details, but for having two separate systems "map_type"/"longitude"/"lattitude" as well as "Coordinates" which uses a template - suggest keep to just one system. Actually displaying the coordinates themselves is not I think notable.David Ruben Talk 14:07, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
The reason for this request was to enable a local map to be displayed in the infobox see examples at Frenchay Hospital, Southmead Hospital & Bristol Royal Infirmary. Similar location maps which are driven by lat & long are (I believe) in preparation for all of UK.— Rod talk 14:12, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry, David, but I can't make out what you objections are. Can you clarify, please? Andy Mabbett 14:25, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Oooh - thats clever, and looks nice. My objection here is that there are 2 separate systems in use (the other using the "Coordinates" parameter) and really only one should be used (to be honest I have not seen an example of coordinates parameter that seemed to work). I wonder if the "coordinates" markup really needs its parameter (and instead get driven by these parameters) ? David Ruben Talk 21:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
The Template:coord system seems much more developped & well structured (in that gives a whole range of mapping options) and also is automated (in as much as maps of each region do not need to be first individually uploaded into wikipedia). Given that both take long/lat values, it should be possible to merge in this infobox the 2 systems ? Thoughts ? David Ruben Talk 22:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Location Place

This is my first time seeing this template. What is the difference between "location" and "place" or is it supposed to be one word? Why is one field empty? or is "location" a header? I find it very confusing and not as intuitive as other templates. Does anyone else seeing it the first time get confused? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 05:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Partly this was to preserve compatability with previous US-centric and UK-centric versions of the infobox, and in part to provide widest possible flexibility, yet allow for the clever coding the infobox does to help wikilink on terms, the country and auto-generate links to List of hospital in.... There is no Place parameter. The infobox takes Country, State and Region which are all wikilinked. The lesser qualification of Location is an optional parameter that often is not required, but also it provides a free text option.
This flexibility for Location to manually code and link to what might otherwise have been in the Region city/area parameter is particularly useful perhaps for US cities which often have article names of the form City (State). However the template still needs the State parameter defining to autogenerate the correct 'List of hospitals in <State>' link. In such as case, Region is not used and Location is given alternative text to display, e.g. Location = [[City (state)|City]]

Hence :

Birmingham Children's Hospital
Location
Place Birmingham, England, (UK)
Organisation
Care System/Type Unknown
Services
Emergency Dept. Unknown
Beds Unknown
History
Founded Unknown
Links
Website Unknown
See also Hospitals in England 
{{Infobox Hospital
| Name        = Birmingham Children's Hospital
| Location    = 
| Region      = Birmingham
| State       = England
| Country     = UK
}}


Whereas

St Thomas' Hospital
Location
Place Lambeth London, England, (UK)
Organisation
Care System/Type Unknown
Services
Emergency Dept. Unknown
Beds Unknown
History
Founded Unknown
Links
Website Unknown
See also Hospitals in England 
{{Infobox Hospital
| Name        = St Thomas' Hospital
| Location   = [[Lambeth]]
| Region     = London
| State      = England
| Country    = UK
}}


And as example more complex coding, and note that the city name, as per first example is also "Birmingham" (but in a different country):

UAB Hospital
Location
Place Birmingham Alabama, (US)
Organization
Care System/Type Unknown
Services
Emergency Dept. Unknown
Beds Unknown
History
Founded Unknown
Links
Website Unknown
See also Hospitals in Alabama 
{{Infobox Hospital
| Name        = UAB Hospital
| Location    = [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]]
| Region      = <!-- e.g. County or City -->
| State       = Alabama
| Country     = US
}}

David Ruben Talk 12:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] questions about template

Is it possible to have the template display nothing if the Wiki-Links field is not filled in? That is, rather than displaying See also with no value, can it be rigged to not show See also at all if there's no value? The "See also" information seems out of place in an infobox about a specific hospital, and usually it goes at the end of the article anyway.

Also, the template documentation seems to indicate that Organization is displayed if Country is set to USA; in actuality, it must be set as US. Esrever 06:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, for most english speaking countries (and this is English Wikipedia), the auto-generated "List of hospitals in..." will always give a valid wikipage - where were you thinking this should not be displayed. The list provision was an attempt to standardise the link which was variably included or not in hospital articles and with insonsistant markup or display. Similarly, for the UK, providing a link to the NHS, prevented this appearing somewhat inappriopriately in external links or see-also lists etc.
Yes, you are correct, the country code needs be set as the 2 country ISO code of "US" for United States Of America. David Ruben Talk 12:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually why display the list at all? A correctly set up hospital is already in a category which already includes an appropriate list if it exists. Also the code defaults to the US list when state a specific list exists. That's reason enough to remove it. To include state and country specific code in the template is a disaster in my opinion. Vegaswikian 08:21, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Standards for U.S. Hospitals?

How should the "Standards" field be filled out for U.S. Hospitals? The explanation on the Template page is unclear to me. What is the standard that is supposed to be used for U.S. hospitals (Joint Commission, ISO, etc) and how should it be worded in the infobox?--Daveswagon 16:51, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

As stated in the documentation "This optional parameter provides details of Quality Standards that the hospital may have achieved and is meant to be used for hospitals where there are no automatic national standards and external internal organisations (e.g. ISO) have been invited in to provide certification". As such it was introduced for hospitals in developing countries which use an outside internatitional standards agency (ISO in the cases where it has been used until now), as there was not any accreditation from their national government. So I'm not sure applies to the US, where I presume it can be assumed that any hospital that is operational will have been vetted by the relavant state medical board ? If this is not the case (I live in the UK), then please bring me up to speed in this - thanks :-) David Ruben Talk 01:52, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problem

Can someone look at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada and see why it is not converting to display the Level 1 trauma center link? I copied the line from another hospital that is working without any luck. Vegaswikian 22:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Did not work because the country parameter wrongly defined as "USA" rather than the 2-letter code that the template uses of "US". Now "Emergency" parameter and "List of Hospitals in..." show correctly :-) David Ruben Talk 01:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:13, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Heliport add

Can we update the template to add an optional parameter to accept the heliport identification, at least in the US. This is an official FAA registration number so it is important since it identifies which hospitals have air transport capabilities. In the US the coding example would be {{airport codes|||NV34}} which displays as (FAA LID: NV34). Vegaswikian 22:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

What about in other countries - are codes given to hospitals having helipads ? If not then just US Federal Aviation Administration location identifier need be given in this infobox template and the (airport codes) template can be called. Else need consider how to pass upto 5 parameters for that template (if all 5 used will look awkward in this infobox) David Ruben Talk 02:06, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Don't know about other countries. So maybe just for the US for now? For the US, we should be safe just using the FAA id since most of these are not likely to have an IATA or ICAO code. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Affiliated University Unknown

A lot of the articles using this template seem to have:

Affilitated University Unknown

which appears to be the default value if the affiliation= parameter is not specified.

The implication of this default behaviour is that we know that all hospitals are affiliated to universities, and hence the lack of an affiliation= parameter is because WP knowledge is incomplete. But I'm not sure that is the case. Do non-teaching hospitals have such an affiliation?. If not then I would suggest that the default behaviour if no affiliation= parameter is presented should be not to report an affiliation at all. -- Chris j wood 13:13, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry missed this edit change on my watch list. Totally agree and so implemented. Of course where it is known that there is no affiliated linked university, then editors free to specify "None" for this to be shown. David Ruben Talk 02:48, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested enhancements

Hallo, I've just used this template to expand the record for Chapel Allerton Hospital in the UK, and have a few comments on how it could be improved.PamD (talk) 13:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, for your many sensible points - thought best to offer an opinion against each of your points rather than as a list at the bottom. David Ruben Talk 23:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


  • Could the title be inside the box, as it is for most other templates? (See Nick Clegg, Beatles, Leeds for a few random examples). It's surprising to see it outside the box!PamD (talk) 13:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
    Seems sensible - anyone any views on this before changing ? David Ruben Talk 23:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
    Y DoneDavid Ruben Talk 13:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


  • Smaller font for the "organisation", or option of this, would produce a prettier output - some NHS trusts have very long names!PamD (talk) 13:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
    Again seems sensible - anyone any views on this before changing ?David Ruben Talk 23:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
    Y DoneDavid Ruben Talk 13:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


  • Could the website link show the web address? That way, anyone printing out a copy of the WP page has this useful information included. It's done this way on many other websites (see my first 2 examples above).PamD (talk) 13:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
    Some website addresses are quite spectularly long. We either show in normal size and accept may extend over many multiple lines, or show so small as to be unreadable by those with visual impairment. There is no requirement to show external web addresses, indeed they normally are not in External link sections; one would code as:
    * [http://www.leedsteachinghospitals.com/patients/aboutus/hospitals/chapel_allerton.php Chapel Allerton Hospital] official website
    To be shown as:
    and are never so shown if a web address is given as an inline link, appearing as thus:[1] David Ruben Talk 23:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


  • Could the location info accommodate UK postcodes? It's helpful to be able to give the full postal address of the hospital, but the way I've done it for CA produces a non-standard layout for the address!PamD (talk) 13:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
    Why ? It is of no importance to the rest of the world readership. IMHO, WP:NOT#Directory needs to be applied here. Similarly articles and this infobox do not go giving telephone numbers for the hospitals, travel directions etc. Furthermore the placement position of Post Code/ZIP codes within an address varies by country and so the UK standard may be wrong elsewhere.David Ruben Talk 23:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


  • I read the discussion about suppressing Speciality, only after I'd wondered why my input didn't appear. CA is a General hospital with a specialised unit which I wanted to mention. How about allowing for this? Or, if not, then add something to the comment in the template to say that this field will not appear unless the hospital type is ... . PamD (talk) 13:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
    We previously had problems with hospitals all seeming to claim they had various speciality units and little ability to confirm the notablity of such claims (eg it seemed almost every General Hospital claimed specialist Endocrine units), and what was being confused was often a long list of specialities (i.e. distinct from having General Medical or Surgical consultants) vs regional or national super-speciality centres of tertiary referral which is what this parameter is meant to encompass.
    I have taken your suggestion to amend the comment in the template - is its meaning/usage now clear ? David Ruben Talk 23:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
    Y DoneDavid Ruben Talk 13:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


  • The "see also" link leads to List of hospitals in the UK which has been replaced by List of hospitals in England etc. Like another editor above I'm not sure of the usefulness of this link, which should be unnecessary if an article is categorised properly, but if it's going to be there could it be updated?PamD (talk) 13:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
    For the "see also" the template automatically provides List of hospitals in England, assuming the State parameter been set to "England". The important caveat is that Region, State and Country are all automatically wikilinked, so specifying "[[England]]" vs "England" just confuses things (template comment states "NB autolinked", but does this need rephrasing ?) - I've corrected the parameter usage here. David Ruben Talk 23:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)