There is currently no guidance on mapping hospitals and Urgent Care Clinics other than what you find in the Places/USA wiki.
I have created this wiki page to offer editors in the US guidance on how to properly map and name hospitals and urgent care clinics.
You can find the current draft, on my user page, here.
It’s just about done. The only issues remaining are the naming section and gathering screenshots.
I am posting this to get feedback and any questions that someone may have. You can also leave suggestions on edits via the discussions page on the wiki.
What about an urgent care center that is not open 24/7 ? If an urgent care center is closed at 2am and you need emergency medical care at 2am this could pose routing issues.
Just to clarify, does “main entrance” refer to the Emergency Room entrance specifically? For example, a hospital near us has a big fancy entrance for outpatient / non emergency visitors, and a second entrance specifically for emergency room drop off.
I don’t see any reason why we should be exclusive to the facilities distributed information, for mapping details. If I am on site and I have credible information that I saw myself why is that not good enough.
I’m OK with it being allowed as one of the many ways to gather data for an accurate map, just like any other place.
Main entrance is the big fancy “main entrance”.
For emergencies, you use the “emergency room entrance”, which should be mapped as a separate place point as discussed in the section on ERs.
I think the time issue can easily be addressed with adding hours to the place. I think that urgent care centers will increase in prevalence in the states. Now not to start a health care debate but they are an important part of urgent medical care and this will help recognize their importance in the delivery of medical care for unexpected issues that arise.
I think that would be limiting the search results. Many of the urgent care clinics that aren’t open 24/7 provide the same level of care as those that are.
You’d have to look at as if Waze didn’t exist. A person trying to find an urgent care clinic would enter it in Google and get a search result of the nearest ones. The person would then decide which one to choose based on location and hours. With a hospital, that’s not an issue as they are all 24/7.
Same with using Waze. A person would enter an urgent care search to locate the nearest one. They would/should look at the hours to see if they are open. It’s not our job to only allow what we think is best. That’s for the user to decide.
I agree that Urgent Care Clinics should be mapped as Hospital/Medical Care. I feel it is absolutely imperative that the hours of operation be entered for such a facility, 24 hours or not.
Besides, anyone that is up at 2am and having a medical emergency would dial 911. Non-emergent/life threatening medical issues go to urgent care. That’s why all urgent care automated lines state “If this is an emergency/life threatening situation, hang up and dial 9-1-1”.
The existing guidance from last year already stipulates urgent care should use the hospital category, this effort is to better explain how to best map these locations
If agreement is to include all urgent care clinics, regardless if they’re 24 hour or not, there should be some statement that defines what qualifies as an urgent care clinic before detailing how to map it. While urgent care centers now qualify for the Hospital/Medical Care category, old habits from previous MapRaids may have some editors choose offices.
I know I have used office for quite some time. This will require a bit of updating if all the urgent care clinics are changed to the hospital category.
That the only thing I can come up with at the moment.