Template talk:Infobox hospital/Archive 1

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   whereas I've coded the template to take just  Childrens logo.gif  (see edit change) David Ruben Talk 02:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

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.

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.
 * Hospital location

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)

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).
 * Country

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.
 * Wiki-links

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').

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?).
 * Organisation


 * 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)

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.
 * Type


 * 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 = 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.
 * Affiliation

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).
 * Certification

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")

This would give the following overall structure: 

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)

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)




 * 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)

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)



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 K e rowyn Leave a note 02:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)




 * 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)


 * 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.
 * 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).
 * 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. K e rowyn 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)