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How to tag a free-standing Emergency Department

In our area, the two large teaching hospitals ( Shands and NFRH ) have each established a number of outlying facilities that are legally categorized as 'Free Standing Emergency Departments'. They are essentially, the emergency department of a large hospital, without the ability to handle inpatient care. They perform two services: Treat & Release and Stabilize & Transport. Generally, they can handle cases up to, but not including, serious trauma.

Treat & Release provides the services that would typically be outpatient (broken arm or leg, minor cuts, etc). Stabilize & Transport is for more serious injuries, that require inpatient admission at the large central hospital.

These facilities are not hospitals in their own right, but are satellite appendages to a hospital that may be many km in distance.

One example, the one I would like to update, is node 4005121921. A similar facility is at node 6431819983 (which did not have a node, but I had to add for a reference). There are 3 or 4 other FSED in the greater Gainesville area.

department hospital emergency freestanding tagging

asked 26 Apr '19, 23:22

NitaRae
61●8●8●14
accept rate: 0%

edited 27 Apr '19, 10:40

SK53 ♦
28.1k●48●268●433

One Answer:

It's only 1 data point, not really an established practice, but I've tagged quite a few of these as amenity=clinic, emergency=yes, opening_hours=24/7.

(and also healthcare=clinic).

I guess there is an argument to be made for a more specific tag or maybe amenity=doctors with emergency and opening_hours tags, but they usually have on site imaging and things like that, so are more capable than a typical doctors office.

answered 27 Apr '19, 01:01

maxerickson
12.7k●10●83●176
accept rate: 32%

edited 27 Apr '19, 01:01

I am going to accept this as Answered, but I wish there were a better tag for a FSED facility.

(27 Apr '19, 12:37) NitaRae

There's a couple ways to improve the situation. You could use the amenity=clinic tag and then also use healthcare=freestanding_emergency_department, and hope that the second tag catches on.

Another option along those lines would be to use amenity=clinic and healthcare=clinic and then add a clinic=freestanding_emergency_department tag. OSM tags often follow the pattern of having a more general primary tag and a more specific secondary tag. I think I prefer that to a top level amenity or healthcare tag, but again that's just 1 opinion, not anything established.

You could post about it on the wiki or tagging mailing lists and see what people have to say. Maybe the broader community likes the idea of a specific top level tag.

(28 Apr '19, 01:27) maxerickson