Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Hospitals/Archive 2

RfC on rules for rankings, reputation for hospitals and related institutions
I'm seeking further comment to see if it is possible to make the rules clearer for how hospital reputation, rankings, ratings, and awards are handled on Wikipedia. What should the established standard be for how ratings and rankings are included on hospital Wikipedia articles?

A bit more background, in case it's helpful: As I have proposed updates to Cleveland Clinic's existing Reputation section, a common response from volunteer editors is that other hospital articles should not be used for guidance. I looked at the Wikipedia articles for the nine hospitals in U.S. News & World Report's Top 10. Of those, six of the articles either listed the hospitals' specialty rankings or contained a table: Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, UCSF Medical Center, Michigan Medicine, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and Stanford Health Care. Three did not: Massachusetts General Hospital, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. There are other differences in how this info is handled: While the Cleveland Clinic article has a Reputation section, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Michigan Medicine have Rankings, New York-Presbyterian Hospital has Awards and recognition, UCSF Medical Center and Stanford Health Care have rankings listed in the introduction.

I hope this conversation leads to more discussion on ways to create a set of standards for streamlined further development of all hospital articles on Wikipedia. Thanks, ClevelandClinicES (talk) 15:06, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Information in the lead is supposed to be a summary of information elsewhere in the article, so if it's only in the lead, that's a problem, but a sentence in the lead stating that it's one of the top 10 hospitals would be appropriate. The main problem with those articles is that they are very short and not well organized. I think if they were more fleshed-out, the information would also be contained in a separate section. I might work on that later.
 * I'm fine with there not being a single standard for whether there's a "reputation" section or an "awards and recognition" section, because it will depend on the hospital, especially with smaller hospitals if we try to standardize it across all hospital articles. Reputation can include positive and negative, and relatively few hospitals will have noteworthy awards.
 * I hope you don't mind that I've linked the articles in your comment so that they are easy for people to check out. Natureium (talk) 15:13, 7 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Not sure I considered this in the past and even created a Wikipedia article on U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Rankings. It is challenging to get hospital rankings. If it is okay for one hospital then I would like to do it for all. I would like to recognize what hospital rankings are reputable then put them into all Wikipedia articles for hospitals. It is not clear to me how to get hospital ratings. Also we need to be updating hospital ratings from a database, and not manually for every rating for every hospital every year, and I am not aware of any hospital rating system that actually shares their grades as exportable data. I know that hospitals like to showcase the US News ratings when they are favorable but I do not know how reliable those ratings are. The academic papers I found all had significant criticism of the quality of the ratings. If these ratings were really significant for judging the entire American medical system then I would have expected some academic consensus on their validity, and I am not sure that exists. We are talking about reviewing an industry with almost a trillion dollars of annual revenue and it seems like there is only occasional one-off, information-scarce research on this rating methodology.
 * , do you have any inside track to request that US New make its hospital ratings publicly available as a dataset? If you do, then they could stage them in a local database and we could import them to Wikidata. Maybe that would be good for your hospital as well as help us improve all our hospital articles.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  15:43, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Hello Bluerasberry, while I certainly appreciate the suggestion, I unfortunately can't be much help with that. We do not have any say with publications in what information they share, or how they share it. While we can share our information with a publication, we're not in a position to ask for an open data set from them. Thank you. ClevelandClinicES (talk) 16:05, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I understand, thanks for the reply.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  16:23, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment Though it is very much wishful thinking on my part; it's unfortunate there are no rankings. (There are a handful of "World's top 10 hospitals" press articles.) If there were, it could've been added to . I have noticed that some NHS hospitals articles have "performance" sections, which contains within information on awards, ratings, and rankings. I'm not sure if adding this was/is a standard practice of WP:WikiProject National Health Service, if it has occurred organically over time, or if it's just down to coincidence on a very small sample size (14% at best). Little pob (talk) 19:04, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment Sorry to be plaintive rather than constructive, because I don't think I am competent to deal with the topic anyway, but as a passing remark, I am very uncomfortable about ranking items on the basis of multiple attributes. It amounts to applying a linear (one dimensional) comparison to a multi-dimensional space. Now, OK, you can argue that the result of combining measurements in multiple dimensions is a vector, and that the length of the vector is linear, but since there is no fundamentally compelling and mutually consistent calibration of scales between the distinct dimensions, that falls apart. Whether this thought is relevant I leave to you, and also how useful the conclusion might be. I cannot argue that it necessarily is meaningless, because I might well have preferences for which hospital to go to if I had to avail myself of their services, but still... Sorry! JonRichfield (talk) 05:50, 15 May 2018 (UTC)


 * discourage I suspect that the prevalence of hospital rankings is like the prevalence of university rankings: largely meaningless statistics added from puffery. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:56, 21 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Weak oppose (Summoned by bot). It seems to me that it's difficult to apply a standardised ranking system for hospitals on Wikipedia, because there is no one standardised and reliable ranking system to acquire the data from. As a minimum, it's hard to imagine that every country in the world will rank their hospitals in an even remotely comparable way (if at all, in some cases). But, even if we consider only hospitals in the US (as I note that all of the hospitals listed in the request are US hospitals, despite the general wording of the RfC) there doesn't appear to be a single reliable system with data on most of them. By all means mention notable awards and so on if they apply to a specific hospital, but applying a single standard to everywhere, even within just one country, could be seen as implying standardisation where none exists. In some countries, there may be a single, reliable, widely accepted and regularly updated, database ranking or rating all major hospitals, and in those countries, it would be acceptable to use it in a standard format. There does not appear to be such a thing for the US, so far as I can determine. Anaxial (talk) 06:31, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment Summoned by bot. I look at rankings the same way I look at awards a company might get. If the award itself is notable, usually evidenced by it having its own article or subsection on Wikipedia, and the awarding of the recognition itself is covered in third party media, then by all means include it in an awards and recognition section. Only the most notable and well-known awards should be considered for the lede, since adding info there might border on being too promotional. Lesser awards or rankings sourced only to a company's press release or other primary sources shouldn't be added, to limit puffery. Once a ranking or award is established as being notable, editors seeking to gain favor within the Wikipedia community could expand their contribution horizons and add the recognition to other articles besides those of companies they have a conflict of interest with. TimTempleton (talk)  (cont)  18:23, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment Summoned by bot. Is there in the USA a standard for categorizing for hospitals? If a hospital got a notable award (i.e. first hospital performing some kind of surgery, or an award from UNICEF for X or Y action)... it should be added in a related section. Same applies for BLP. Robertgombos (talk) 04:44, 31 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Bar all rankings not by government agencies.  These are pure marketing shit that hospital reps come to WP to push and push and update and tweak.  They are a complete waste of our time.   The AHRQ lists the rankings here - it is easy to see which are govenment agencies there.  Jytdog (talk) 18:00, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * oppose seems to be promotional...--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:51, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Permit and standardize the ratings but not in the infobox nor the lede paragraphy, which would be overemphasis They're valid objective content, whose reliability depends upon the providor. USNWR appears to be generally accepted as a RS for this in the US. We can't judge quality ouselves, but we can report other sources that do.  DGG ( talk ) 22:11, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

I left a message on WBG's talk page a few days ago but there was no reply. Why was this discussion closed when there was no consensus or resolution? Natureium (talk) 15:05, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * It has been 6 weeks. Having consensus about some parts and no consensus about others is a common outcome. I do not want the conversation to end but with the passage of time an endpoint is useful for taking stock of the conversation and going forward.
 * How and when did you want this conversation to resolve? I see this outcome as normal.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  15:35, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it would be useful if the closure said anything at all, so it's clear that someone actually considered all that was said and determined that there was no consensus. Before I left the talk page message, all it said was "Closing." Someone had just commented it on the day before, and by closing it they are preventing someone from responding to that comment. What was the purpose of cutting off the discussion at the point? WP:NAC says "Unlike other discussions on Wikipedia, RfCs do not require a formal closure, and doing so may often be unnecessary or even counterproductive. Editors should assess whether closure is needed at all, or whether the discussion has come to a natural conclusion on its own, and reached a consensus which is self-evident to those involved, rendering a closure moot, and an inaccurate closure unnecessarily problematic." This wasn't even a real RfC, it was just titled RfC, so there was no point to closing it. It hadn't gotten out of control, and no decision was made. Natureium (talk) 15:47, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, you are right about RfC closures not requiring a close, and you are right that this discussion seems to not have been registered as an RfC. I thought incorrectly about these things.
 * I could go either way with this. My view is that this conversation is juggling about 10 similar but different issues and that the way it is framed it is not going to bring consensus for any of them. In that sense I support WBG's closure. I agree that this user should post a closing statement but it does not seem unusual to me for someone to close a conversation, even one in progress, while they write a closure statement.
 * I recognize the other view that maybe the conversation is productive and is leading somewhere useful. Since you bring this up, I would support you re-opening the conversation and encouraging its development. If others object then I think a fair compromise would be to plan for closure in a few weeks.
 * I do not want to end the conversation. I only do not see much hope that this branch of the conversation is going to lead to a consensus. My wish would be to narrow the conversation into parts and to try again.
 * If you want to re-open this then please do.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  16:01, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * , Okay, so now WBG closed it. I agree with the closing rationale that there is no consensus.
 * At this point I do not think it would make sense to reopen this discussion but I would immediately join a new discussion. The new discussion could be exactly the same. Alternatively it could be on any one of the issues raised by this above discussion. Here are some of the difficult issues I see:
 * To what extent should Wikimedia contributors document ratings?
 * Are ratings for hospitals like awards in WikiProject Awards, like movie reviews under WikiProject Film, or something else?
 * How do we determine the reliability of ratings versus paid advertising?
 * How do we address copyright in lists?
 * Which hospital ratings are proprietary products copyrighted under Copyright in lists?
 * When, if ever, is it okay to import some ratings but not others?
 * I have doubts that we can bring in the US World and News Ratings without a copyright discussion.
 * Wikidata relationship
 * In what ways are ratings like and unlike a dataset?
 * What part fits only on Wikipedia versus in a mix of Wikipedia and Wikidata?
 * Which ratings should we include?
 * Which external partners should we seek?
 * Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for example publishes public domain hospital reviews
 * We do not know who publishes ratings.
 * I care about all these issues and want to advance the conversation. If anyone can anticipate the easiest path to progress then I want to discuss more with anyone else who will lead a conversation.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:09, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks to everyone for participating in this request for comment. This is obviously a complex discussion, and one that I think could continue based on User:Bluerasberry's comments. I am happy to contribute however is most helpful in continuing to discuss these issues. ClevelandClinicES (talk) 16:15, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Cleveland Clinic images are available
I've uploaded 10 historical Cleveland Clinic images to Wikimedia Commons that might be useful for the Cleveland Clinic or History of Cleveland Clinic articles. There is also an image of the Cleveland Plain Dealer's front page the day after the Cleveland Clinic fire of 1929. I hope these are helpful to the project. Thanks, ClevelandClinicES (talk) 19:06, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Improving citations at Mayo Clinic
Hello! I'm Audrey. On behalf of my employer, Mayo Clinic, I offered citations to help correct several sourcing issues at Mayo Clinic. WikiProject Hospital members who are interested in the Mayo Clinic might care to review: Talk:Mayo_Clinic.

Thanks! Audrey at Mayo Clinic (talk) 19:57, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!
A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
 * – Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Derrick Morris Article for Deletion
One of your most famous patients. 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 16:19, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Seeking additional feedback for history of Mayo Clinic
Hello! It's Audrey at Mayo Clinic. On behalf of my employer, I am working to update Mayo Clinic. I have worked with two other editors who offered great feedback to develop and improve the History section of the article. WikiProject Hospitals members might care to review my request.

Thanks! Audrey at Mayo Clinic (talk) 13:44, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Proposed merger - Creighton University Medical Center
I believe that Bergan Mercy Medical Center should be merged with Creighton University Medical Center. Please see and participate in the discussion. These pages seem to discuss the same hospital that has a complicated history with multiple locations. The history sections for each need to be reconciled and merged. Mdewman6 (talk) 03:36, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

New bot to remove completed infobox requests
Hello! I have recently created a bot to remove completed infobox requests and am sending this message to WikiProject Hospitals since the project currently has a backlogged infobox request category. Details about the task can be found at Bots/Requests for approval/PearBOT 2, but in short it removes all infobox requests from articles with an infobox, once a week. To sign up, reply with and tell me if any special considerations are required for the Wikiproject. For example: if only a specific infobox should be detected, such as infobox journal for WikiProject Academic Journals; or if an irregularly named infobox such as starbox begin should be detected. Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

Sent on behalf of Trialpears (talk) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:34, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Construction/opening dates
Would anyone support the idea of adding | start_date and | completion_date parameters for hospital infoboxes similar to how they have for building infoboxes to signify when construction starts and when opening starts? I think that this would be more clear than just a founding date which we have now (can vaguely mean conception, construction, or opening). Vaselineeeeeeee★★★ 18:08, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You seem to have given support at Talk:Mackenzie Vaughan Hospital; any support here? Thanks. Vaselineeeeeeee★★★ 17:11, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * The infobox needs to distinguish between construction start date and opening date at the least, and establishment/founding should also be considered. I have no preference regarding the name of the parameters to be used. Mind  matrix  02:27, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * If you're going to go through the bother of changing parameter names, I would recommend less ambiguous parameter names. Right now the infobox has founded (The year or full date that the hospital opened), closed (Optional; year or date when a hospital closed), and demolished (Optional; year or date when demolished, if different from closure). The last two of those three are unambiguous, but I agree that "founded" is less clear.
 * I don't think that replacing founded with start_date would solve any problems. I recommend opened for "The year or full date that the hospital opened", since it parallels perfectly with closed. I think that for a hospital as both a building and an organization, which is what this template appears to be for, a construction start date is too much trivial detail for the infobox. If details of the hospital structure itself are notable or interesting enough to be included in the infobox, editors can embed Infobox building or Infobox NRHP. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:03, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Replacing founded with opened is good with me. The start_date would be for the construction start, so to make it less ambiguous, could be construction_date. I would disagree, though, that a construction date is "trivial". How would it be any less trivial than demolished? Construction and opening date pair together, while closed and demolished pair together. Things like architect, engineer, etc would be something I'd classify as too trivial for hospitals. I think that embedding another infobox into an existing one just for one or two essential building parameters may be more of a convolution than simply adding them to this infobox. <b style="color:black">Vaseline</b><b style="color:lightgrey">eeeeeee</b>★★★ 20:29, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems like constructed would be the best syntactical match for opened/closed/demolished. I find it easier to understand and remember parameters when they follow a pattern. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:55, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems like constructed would be the best syntactical match for opened/closed/demolished. I find it easier to understand and remember parameters when they follow a pattern. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:55, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Tabs
I added tabs on the main page to help make the content more navigable and simpler to use. I created a tab for Tutorial and will copy the information from the main page to that tab. I would suggest that we also add some metrics to our goals, like create List of hospitals in all countries in each continent, create Featured articles, reduce the number of stub and start articles by improving them etc.

14:37, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Mayo Clinic stats
Hello! It's Robby at Mayo Clinic. On behalf of the hospital, I am working to update Mayo Clinic. I want to notify editors of a request that was made by a former Mayo Clinic rep to update stats for the Core operations section of the article. WikiProject Hospitals members might still care to review that request. Since User:Audrey at Mayo Clinic is no longer Mayo Clinic's rep on Wikipedia, I will be happy to answer questions.

Thanks! Robby at Mayo Clinic (talk) 20:25, 1 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Great job.  You might look at the references on List of hospitals in Minnesota for some ideas on references to use to get this information, if you require more.  Please check my work on the hospitals.    14:45, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Hospital beds and pandemic
Would it not be useful during the current pandemic crisis to add number of beds to Lists of hospitals? If course good references should also be included. Talk to G Moore 00:24, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The number of beds is already an option in each article's infobox. Keeping the same piece of data updated in two different places is a maintenance hassle. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:40, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Some hospitals will not have articles.  I only had to use two sources to get number of staffed beds and licensed beds.  So long as it is sourced, the numbers are good until the next update.   Having numbers of beds in a column helps sort and determine the size of hospitals.   14:50, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata project on hospitals?
Is anyone aware of a similar project about hospitals on Wikidata? Some of the information that got imported there from the various Wikipedias (such as the List of Hospitals in Japan) don't make sense at Wikidata, because this is something you answer by query ("get me all things that are hospitals that have a location and that location is in Japan"). This can be further qualified, for example "that has now been closed" or "that is still in service" for historical hospitals or currently operating ones. I'm considering starting such a WikiProject to look into modeling hospitals. --WiseWoman (talk) 19:04, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Come say hello at d:Wikidata:WikiProject Medicine. There is d:Wikidata:WikiProject Medicine/Hospitals by country but I think there is not a data model setup for this. If you want to start a WikiProject then I would join, or if you wish, I could set up the WikiProject there. I recently set up d:Wikidata:WikiProject Clinical Trials and I also need a WikiProject for hospitals to complement that. What can I do to support?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  20:33, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I have been working on the WikiProject Hospitals for a while now.  I am trying to make sure every country is covered and that the notable hospitals all have Infobox hospital in them.  See the statistics and metrics section on the project page.  Perhaps, the info on the Infobox could be linked to Wikidata.   -- Talk to G Moore 20:42, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you mean this page in this statistics tab? d:Wikidata:WikiProject_Medicine/Hospitals_by_country/numbers I do not see what you did. Can you link what I should see?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  23:40, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
 * No, see WikiProject Hospitals/Assessment statistics section and the main page WikiProject Hospitals 23:52, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Needed Infobox hospital
I have been cleaning up the Category:Hospital articles needing infoboxes. Currently, there are only 256 to go. There were about 400 when I started a couple of months ago. When the number gets to zero, I will work on the Category:Hospital articles needing coordinates. It would be nice to have a bot look at the Hospital articles and remove "needs-coord=Yes" or change it to "needs-coord=No" for those articles that already have a coordinate. This was done for the "needs-infobox" and it has helped. My spot check of the "needs-coord=Yes" articles showed many that already had coordinates but the "needs-coord=Yes" was still on the talk page. Does anyone know how to make this happen? -- Talk to G Moore 05:22, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Lists of hospitals discussion
The purpose of lists is to show and comment about the hospitals in a given region. Wikipedia discourages pages that are just a directory of hospitals. One editor gave me the following feedback:
 * "An encyclopedic list cannot just be a directory of just names, or just names and locations; actual real directories out in the world supported by commercial/other entities will convey more, being more usefully by helpfully providing phone numbers and other stuff, and will be kept more current and and simply are better all around. And do not require future maintenance, and sturm and drang of future AFDs and so on because the stuff is in fact obviously unsuitable in view of most editors.

The formal Wikipedia guidance on WP:NOTDIR states that Wikipedia lists are not: There is no specific guidance on hospital lists. However, the guidance on companies and organizations should apply to hospitals:
 * "Simple listings without context information."
 * "The white or yellow pages. Contact information such as phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses is not encyclopedic."
 * "Directories, directory entries, electronic program guides, or resources for conducting business."
 * A company or organization may be included in a list of companies or organizations whether or not it meets the Wikipedia notability requirement, unless a given list specifically requires this. If the company or organization does not have an existing article in Wikipedia, a citation to an independent, reliable source should be provided to establish its membership in the list's group.

Guidance on what to include in a hospitals list is contained in one of the following Wikipedia selection criteria for lists:
 * Every entry meets the notability criteria for its own non-redirect article in the English Wikipedia. Red-linked entries are acceptable if the entry is verifiably a member of the listed group and it is reasonable to expect an article could be forthcoming in the future.  This standard prevents Wikipedia from becoming an indiscriminate list, and prevents individual lists from being too large to be useful to readers.
 * Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria. These lists are created explicitly because most or all of the listed items do not warrant independent articles: for example, List of Dilbert characters or List of paracetamol brand names. Such lists are almost always better placed within the context of an article on their "parent" topic. Before creating a stand-alone list consider carefully whether such lists would be better placed within a parent article. (Note that this criterion is never used for living people.)
 * Short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group. These should only be created if a complete list is reasonably short (less than 32K) and could be useful (e.g., for navigation) or interesting to readers.  The inclusion of items must be supported by reliable sources.  For example, if reliable sources indicate that a complete list would include the names of ten notable businesses and two non-notable businesses, then you are not required to omit the two non-notable businesses.  However, if a complete list would include hundreds or thousands of entries, then you should use the notability standard to provide focus to the list.

Questions seeking guidance
I'm confused. Should lists of hospitals try to be complete, or only have notable hospitals? If one were to make a single list of hospitals in the US, it would be too long and useless. But, once the geographic area is subdivided to metropolitan regions, there would be roughly 100 or fewer hospitals. Should those lists be complete or just notable? If lists are incomplete, should they say so and point to the external complete lists? MabryTyson (talk) 16:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

If the purpose of the list is only to point to other Wikipedia pages (where more complete info is kept), then should a list only have the name of the hospital (and maybe the city/county/state) and the wikilink, and nothing more? But if the utility of the lists having basic info about the hospitals overrides the desire to minimize duplication of information, then what is a proper set of info? Beds (lumped together, or separated? acute, ICU, psych, pediatric, ...), Organization (VA, Shriner's, Kaiser, etc. - often important for access), primary specialty (cancer, women's, children, psych, rehab, ... - it isn't always in the name), other info (Level III trauma center, etc.). In my experience, I've found it hard to find a simple list of hospitals in a region, esp. with characteristics. MabryTyson (talk) 16:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

If a hospital is notable and has its own Wikipedia page, then its name should link to that page, which would then have a link to the hospital's web page. But if it isn't notable, then the link can be an external link directly to the hospital's web page. MabryTyson (talk) 16:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Should the list of hospitals be limited to hospital (in-patient) facilities? No clinics or outpatient-only facilities. Should lists include all kinds of in-patient hospitals (general, specialized, psychiatric, rehab, ...)? MabryTyson (talk) 16:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

How should hospital groups be dealt with (Veterans Administration, Shriner's, Memorial Hermann)? They aren't a hospital so shouldn't be an entry in the list of hospitals, but they are relevant. My opinion is they should be specified as a column with the hospital facility, that can then be linked to the Wikipedia page or external page, as appropriate. MabryTyson (talk) 16:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Are there some examples of well-done hospital lists? Especially, one that has a map of the hospitals in the list. MabryTyson (talk) 16:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Good questions, . As I have gone through hundreds of these list, I started developing some ad hoc guidance that is working for me.   Look at the article Lists of hospitals in Oceania.

User:G. Moore User talk:G. Moore  01:58, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
 * For countries where there are only a few hospitals, I just listed the hospitals as bullets under the country names in this article. I then created a redirect that redirects List of hospitals in country to an anchor on this page.  Alternatively, if there are only a few hospitals in the country and they all have articles in Wikipedia, I create a redirect to the List of hospitals in country to the Category:Hospitals in country.
 * If there are more than a few hospitals but less than fifty, I created a separate List of hospitals in country. In this list, only the notable hospitals have articles and the rest are just listed.  The lists should give some other useful facts about the hospital like number of beds and location that can be used in a sortable table in the list.
 * If there are hundreds of hospitals in a country, some users have broken out the country into Lists of hospitals in Province/State/City of Country. In this case, only notable hospitals would have articles but others would be listed.
 * The lists should not try to be comprehensive if there are large numbers of hospitals in the country/region. Wikipedia lists of hospitals should not be directories of hundreds of hospitals.  The list should contain hospitals that notable or possibly notable, which would help determine if an article should be written on the hospital.  The notability criteria for a hospital is found at WikiProject Hospitals/Tutorials.
 * I have found that the best way to show maps is to use the
 * The definition of what is a hospital is has changed over time.  I have been adding to the History of hospitals article to help define how this has changed.  I think that we should be as broad as possible to cover historical concepts of hospitals.

Guidance for lists of hospitals
The following is a draft guidance for Lists in the hospital WikiProject. Comments are welcome. 05:43, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

There should be lists or Set index articles for importance=Top level lists for hospitals in geographic regions. These top level lists are usually just a list of lists. See the following examples:
 * Lists of hospitals
 * Lists of hospitals in Europe
 * Lists of hospitals in Oceania

These top level lists are primarily lists of lists. For some smaller countries where there are only a few hospitals, the hospitals are listed in the lists of hospitals in the continent. For instance in Lists of hospitals in Oceania, there are only a few hospitals in the Federated States of Micronesia and Kiribati, so these hospitals are listed in the Lists of hospitals in Oceania. They could also be listed in the hospitals section of the Health in Country article, e.g. Health in Fiji and a link and anchor placed in the Lists of hospitals in Oceania article so that navigation templates for continents work with a redirect. Placing them in either of these avoids having a list that contains only a few hospitals in it. The hospitals would only be linked if they notable and an article has been or might be written on the hospital.

For a country, importance is also Top Level. The List of hospitals in country article should not be too long, i.e.  countries with large numbers of hospitals (more than a few hundred) like the Lists of hospitals in the United States, should be broken out by U.S. State, e.g. List of hospitals in Alabama, List of hospitals in Minnesota, etc. State level hospital lists are importance=High. For the List of hospitals in the United Kingdom, the list links to Top Level lists for the following:
 * List of hospitals in England,
 * List of hospitals in Wales,
 * List of hospitals in Scotland and
 * List of hospitals in Northern Ireland

Whether it is the country or sub-country (state or other administrative boundary level), the hospitals listed do not all have to be notable and not every hospital needs a link to an individual hospital article. If the list is incomplete, add the template:    at the top of the article. The lists should have text describing the hospitals in the region, such as oldest hospital, largest hospital, number of beds, or other statistical or historical facts with referencing.

The city and county where the hospital is located should be given along with the name of the hospital for uniqueness. Other information such as the size of the hospital (number of beds) and references for each hospital in the list should be given. Many of these lists are created using sortable tables, so that hospitals can be compared and searched more easily.

Infobox parameters cleanup
Over the past couple of months I've made some substantial progress in cleaning up a number of articles in Category:Pages using infobox hospital with unknown parameters to a point where all articles are now using the correct parameters. I've tried my best to appropriately complete this task but in some instances the information within some articles just wasn't easy enough to correct so where I felt it absolutely appropriate the content in the parameters was removed. Hoping that some other members here can help keep an eye on this task as I won't as active as normal on Wikipedia in the coming months. Mrbuskin (talk) 10:17, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Notability and number of beds
Hello. I did a few AfDs for hospitals recently and people voted keep because they said there was census that hospitals with over 500 beds are notable. Although, in both cases the hospitals lacked sufficient coverage to be notable IMO, and I don't think either person even addressed it. So, I'm wondering if that is actually the consensus. Along with if it is where it was discussed, because I can't seem to find anything about it. I'd also like to know how that fits with the notability guidelines. I wouldn't see something like the number of beds a hospital has over riding the general notability guidelines {or WP:ORG} and it doesn't seem to in the notability section of this project either, but that's what people are insinuating. So, I'd appreciate any thoughts about it and particularly a link to where it was discussed if it ever was. --Adamant1 (talk) 05:43, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Having 500 beds does not by itself make a hospital notable, but it is likely that it will be notable.  The Notability guidelines are spelled out in WikiProject Hospitals/Tutorials.  Specifically, the references should include:

A hospital article could be started if you think these sources exist, but you should try to find these sources. A hospital this size has probably been recognized twice in local newspapers or hospital associations or other sources.
 * that the hospital has been noticed by two unrelated, independent third-party sources
 * that at least one source that discusses the organization in-depth (many paragraphs directly about the hospital)
 * that at least one source that is outside of the organization's local/service area.

WP:HOS -- Talk to G Moore 23:52, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Stars have aligned
The stars have aligned. We have met a major goal of this project. As of this afternoon, all of the hospital articles have:
 * an assessed class= ✅
 * an importance ✅
 * an Infobox hospital when required ✅
 * no errors in Infobox parameters ✅

Now on to other goals:
 * assign coordinates to all hospital articles that need them (587 articles)
 * add an image when requested (1,456 articles)
 * add a year of establishment when missing (100 articles)
 * improve articles needing attention (37 articles)
 * improving Stub articles

23:52, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

List of hospitals in Angola
There is a discussion at Articles for deletion/List of hospitals in Angola, which relates to discussions that have taken place here. It would be useful if some participants with knowledge of the consensus (or lack thereof) on the topic of lists of hospitals could participate in the discussion. Note: I had initially closed this AfD as "merge into Healthcare in Angola", and I have reopened it in order to generate additional comments and to tentatively reach a consensus. Thanks. Olivier (talk) 10:52, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Hospital lists as separate articles
Hey y'all! Glad to find this wikiproj is active. I've been working really hard to try to make our hospital articles cleaner and with more secondary sources. I was surprised to see so much WP:PEACOCK on so many of the articles. Anyway, I'm currently speaking with an editor that thinks that a list I've made of Tenet Healthcare-owned hospitals does not meet general notability guidelines. However, after reading the above discussion on lists, I'm a bit confused. What (if any) guidance can anyone provide on this? It seems that the list goes right along with Manual of Style/Lists, including 2.1 Information and 2.2 Navigation. This large amount of data would also disrupt the prose of the rest of the article. Any help is greatly appreciated. I do not work in the healthcare industry, but have recently found hospitals interesting on wp. Congrats on all having infoboxes. I'll make sure to snap as many pictures of hospitals as I can while driving around town as I can. :) Draft of the article: Draft:List of acute care hospitals owned by Tenet Healthcare Taylor2646 (talk) 03:13, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
 * How many hospitals do they run and how many of them have articles/good sourcing? I think that's the important thing. You can cite bullets points from a style manual, but those bullet points aren't why your list got deleted. The lack of notability is. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:23, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * 65 properties. Most have their own standalone article. I understand if it was just a list of redlinks, but that's not the case. Similar lists have been made for another project I've been working on for television stations, a good example being List of stations owned or operated by Nexstar Media GroupTaylor2646 (talk) 13:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hhhmmm, the current consensus seems to be that hospitals with over 500 beds and the proper sources are notable, but even then might be better listed in the parent companies article instead of a separate list depending. I highly doubt all 65 of their properties have over 500 beds and more then likely a lot of the articles will be deleted and redirected eventually anyway. That's what seems to be happening with other articles about hospitals that have parent companies. For instance a lot of Seventh-Day Adventist hospital articles have merged to their parent companies article. A lot of the articles probably shouldn't have been created in the first place. Especially since like you say a good majority of them having all the WP:PEACOCK and promo stuff. One I saw the other day actually had the opening hours of the hospital. The same goes for lists of hospitals. It's kind of apples and oranges comparing them to lists of radio stations. --Adamant1 (talk) 19:18, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
 * There is a description of notability in WikiProject Hospitals/Tutorials that provides a good description of the notability of hospitals.  After looking at almost all of the hospital articles in reviewing the infoboxes and unassessed articles, I have added attention=yes to articles' talk page WP:HOS template that have no sourcing and contain minimal content.  This should give editors time to either find sourcing or determine if these hospitals are indeed notable.  In some cases, hospitals are notable, not for their size but because of their historical significance or uniqueness.  As for hospital companies,  the company should still have the sourcing and lists need only show notable hospitals if there is a large number of hospitals managed by the company. If you find articles on hospital companies that do not have sufficient sourcing, please add needs additional references tempalte to the article and attention=yes in the WP:HOS template, so that they can be reviewed.  In some cases, additional references will be found.  -- Talk to G Moore 12:33, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Please go voice your opinion
Per WP:UCRN I've requested the move of New York Hospital to Weill Cornell Medical Center because of the commonly known name. Talk:New_York_Hospital Andrew nyr (talk, contribs) 15:49, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Notable people born in hospitals?
I just removed a section on "Notable people born here" from the article Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. I think that's taking the cringing cult of celebrity too far - it's bad enough having B-listers in settlement and school articles. Notable staff - yes, absolutely but surely no need for "notable" births. Did I do the wrong thing? --195.213.187.38 (talk) 21:49, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There is also a "Notable patients" (was "Famous patients") at Cromwell Hospital, which is just a list of people who had heart attacks or drank themselves to death. I would question whether that section belong in other hospital articles. --195.213.187.38 (talk) 21:55, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Notable births might be stretching it in my opinion. Prolonged treatments and deaths are more acceptable since the hospital is mentioned in news reports.  Sometimes, this is what makes a hospital notable and there are many references for these events.  WP:HOS -- Talk to G Moore 12:54, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Notability criteria revisions - trauma centers
I think we should consider some revisions to the notability guidelines because some articles for large regional hospitals do not appear to strictly meet all the criteria, apparently due to insufficient citations within the article, and are being successfully deleted at WP:AFD. For example, Community Regional Medical Center was recently deleted per Articles for deletion/Community Regional Medical Center in spite of it being a large regional level I trauma center. Even though the guidelines note that "In practice, large, regional hospitals will almost always meet all of these standards", users are apparently scrutinizing the existing citations as evidence for a lack of notability rather than taking measures to add references and improve the article. I think at a minimum we should specifically note that verified trauma level status should be sufficient to meet criterion #3, "that at least one source that is outside of the organization's local/service area," and that the other 2 criteria are likely to be met. Mdewman6 (talk) 20:38, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree. Help me write the right wording for the Notability section of the tutorial. WP:HOS  -- Talk to G Moore 17:38, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Something along these lines? All the revisions are in the second-to-last paragraph. Perhaps a bit verbose, and I fear people will still blindly cling to the WP:ORG bullet points without reading the caveats in prose. Fee free to edit. Mdewman6 (talk) 20:00, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I added some verbage to the third criteria that might help.  -- Talk to G Moore 20:32, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me. I will add to the project page. Mdewman6 (talk) 20:42, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Update
I just finished completing editing articles and talk pages that had without class or importance assigned. There must have been a bot that found several hundred hospital articles. added the template without class or importance parameters.

I did my best job of assigning these parameters in a consistent manner. Many of the articles already had class for other WikiProjects, which helped as a starting point. While editing these articles and talk pages, I checked the Infobox to make sure it was present, properly formatted, and had coordinates. If there was no infobox and the article needed it, I either added the infobox or added needs-infobox=Yes on the talk page. WP:HOS -- Talk to G Moore 12:54, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , OMG I am so embarrassed, I just saw this. I used WP:AWB to find all pages in the hospital category that didn't have the template and added it. I should have included ratings, Thanks, Andrew nyr  (talk, contribs) 04:56, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Category:Hospitals articles needing expert attention has been nominated for discussion
Category:Hospitals articles needing expert attention has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Peaceray (talk) 20:37, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

MacDougall Hospital image. Comment
I have added an illustration from a WikiMedia Commons PDF book to the article MacDougall Hospital. The only issue is that the image is rotated -90 degrees, and I do not know how to rotate this type of image to the correct orientation. If anybody in this WikiProject is willing to take a crack at it, I would appreciate it. --HugoHelp (talk) 23:57, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Science Competition 2021
Hi. I would like to remind you all that Wiki Science Competition 2021 has started in many countries last week. It will last until November 30th or December 15th, depending on the areas.

WSC is organized every two years, and people from all countries can upload files (the goal are the international prizes paid by WMEE and WMCH) but specific national pages are also set up, for example for the USA or Ireland or New Zealand. Such national competitions (when they exist) act as an additional incentive to participate.

We expect a sitenotice to show up for all readers here on enWikipedia as well, probably during the second half of the month when all countries with national competitions are open for submission at the same time. In the meantime, if you are planing to upload some nice descriptive photos, infographics or videos to Wikimedia Commons, please consider submitting them using the WSC upload interface, you might win a prize.--Alexmar983 (talk) 18:50, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Possible COI editing at Gleneagles Hospital Penang
Would some member or members of this WikiProject mind taking a look at some of the recent edits made to Gleneagles Hospital Penang by ? Based upon what Wcsneel posted at WP:MCQ regarding a logo they want use in Draft:Gleneagles Hospital Medini Johor, it appears that there's at least a WP:APPARENTCOI and possibly some WP:UPE going on. Perhaps this is just a case of a who means well and is just not very familiar with things Wikipedia, but the Wscneel's edits to the Penang hospital article include a page move and a major expansion; so, it might be a good idea for some editors who are familiar with Wikipedia articles about hospitals to go over the changes and keep what can be kept and remove what needs to be removed. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:10, 2 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I did a first cut at the article.  Cleaned up the sources to clarify where they came from.   Some additional sourcing would be good, though.  Talk to G Moore 01:49, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

RAK Hospital
The article about RAK Hospital in the United Arab Emirates has recently been significantly expanded. The article now makes promotional and unscientific appearing claims. I did a little bit, but have no background in the area and it could use a lot more pruning. Thank you, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 23:13, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

User script to detect unreliable sources
I have (with the help of others) made a small user script to detect and highlight various links to unreliable sources and predatory journals. Some of you may already be familiar with it, given it is currently the 39th most imported script on Wikipedia. The idea is that it takes something like and turns it into something like
 * John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.
 * John Smith "Article of things" Deprecated.com. Accessed 2020-02-14.

It will work on a variety of links, including those from cite web, cite journal and doi.

The script is mostly based on WP:RSPSOURCES, WP:NPPSG and WP:CITEWATCH and a good dose of common sense. I'm always expanding coverage and tweaking the script's logic, so general feedback and suggestions to expand coverage to other unreliable sources are always welcomed.

Do note that this is not a script to be mindlessly used, and several caveats apply. Details and instructions are available at User:Headbomb/unreliable. Questions, comments and requests can be made at User talk:Headbomb/unreliable.

- &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b}

This is a one time notice and can't be unsubscribed from. Delivered by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:01, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto)
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto) that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. ASUKITE 20:14, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Ascension request
Hi editors, my name is KC and I work for Ascension. I made a request to update the history section over at the Ascension page and was hoping someone here would take a look! I won't make any changes myself since I have a conflict of interest. I really appreciate the help! KC at Ascension (talk) 20:57, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

How to go about lengthy revisions to lists
Hello, I am planning to go through and correctly format "lists of hospitals" articles into the sortable table outlined in the wikiproject guidelines, such as the List of Hospitals in Texas. This will, obviously, take quite a bit of time. How should I approach this? Should I change it to a table with only the name of the hospital, city, and county and publish it, then go back and add bed numbers, trauma levels, sources, etc. bit by bit as I'm able to? I'm afraid that so many revisions to the article will be annoying if I keep publishing changes and updating over and over again. But how else would I go about it? Is there a way to save it as a draft and keep working on it so that it doesn't get published only halfway done and look a mess? Any advice would be appreciated. SparklingSnail (talk) 21:30, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Help Improving Mayo Clinic Health System article
Hi WikiProject Hospitals! I'm Maria, an employee of Mayo Clinic Health System. The current article about the health system is short, so I've been working on a draft that expands on our history, facilities, research, and community work. Since I have a conflict of interest, I understand I can't edit the article directly. I'm here hoping to find editors who are interested in helping to review my draft and implement appropriate improvements. You can view my draft here. I posted an edit request on the article Talk page. Thanks! MM from MCHS (talk) 16:17, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Syntax of WikiProject Hospitals template.
The article states "Add completed { {WikiProject Hospitals}} templates ...". OK, I'm interested to add the template to a page but baffled to find the syntax to add the parameters correctly. Please provide a link to the syntax. Thx, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 16:18, 8 July 2022 (UTC)


 * @PeterEasthope: WP:1.0/A describes the parameters of assessment (Stub/Start/C etc...). If you want to add WPHOSPITAL easily with a good GUI, as well as other project tags, I recommend using WP:RATER, a wonderful tool for rating and categorizing pages into WikiProjects. Happy Editing-- IAm Chaos  05:05, 9 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks.   is now a link to the template page. The reader can see the syntax after one click. Regards, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 15:44, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Related requested move
To get things clear (and wider discussed) I have started a formal requested move: Talk:Hartheim Killing Facility. The Banner <i style="color:maroon">talk</i> 17:43, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Project-independent quality assessments
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a class parameter to WikiProject banner shell, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to WikiProject banner shell, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass WPBannerMeta a new custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:42, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Content assessment
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Content assessment, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. &#x0020;This WikiProject received this message because it currently uses "Current" and/or "Future" class(es). There is a proposal to split these two article "classes" into a new parameter "time", in order to standardise article-rating across Wikipedia (per RfC), while also allowing simultaneous usage of quality criteria and time for interest projects. Thanks! &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 21:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

IP-hopping vandal changing hospital descriptions, esp. to add "district general"
I've come across a pattern of Hong Kong IPs vandalising hospital articles by changing the description in the opening sentence and infobox, mostly to falsely say "district general" hospital; see contribs for, and  for example. Please keep an eye out for this. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:01, 16 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Materialscientist, would you know anything about this? I see you've reverted several of the bad edits and blocked one of the IPs (though for unrelated edits). --Paul_012 (talk) 17:11, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Update: Having gone through a whole lot of the IP editor's edits, it does seem that they might not be outright vandalism, but very misguided edits that attempted to force blatantly incorrect terminology into articles in areas where they have no knowledge. I'm not able to sift the valid edits from the bad ones, so will be reverting on sight. --Paul_012 (talk) 04:15, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

The following IPs have been used to make such edits, as far as I've found. --Paul_012 (talk) 07:33, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:SGUL Teddy Bear Hospital
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:SGUL Teddy Bear Hospital that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 11:38, 25 October 2023 (UTC)