Proposal:Clinic (Medical)

Obsoleted by Proposed features/Healthcare

Clinic (Medical)
Proposal status:	Obsoleted (inactive)
Proposed by:	Batchoy
Tagging:	amenity=clinic Data item
Applies to:	node
Definition:	Medium-sized combined medical centres and polyclinics with tens of doctors, nurses and associated staff which offers diagnosis and treatment. Minor surgeries and ongoing treatments may be available here, as may drop-in emergency care. Alternatively, a clinic may simply be a building where a specific, specialised branch of medicine is practised.
Statistics:
Rendered as:
Draft started:
Proposed on:	2006-11-18

Rationale

I feel that there is a need to differentiate clinics from hospitals and doctors surgerys, particulalry in the UK but I belive it is applicable elsewhere. For example in Baldock we have the usual doctors surgery, but we also have a medical centre which is used clincs and screening sesssion wholly separate from the local doctors. However it is not a hospital as it has no resident in patients.

Applies to

Nodes.

Usage

<tag k="amenity" v="clinic"/>

Examples

Out patient clinic <tag k="amenity" v="clinic"/>

Icon Design

These icons are part of a sequence of medicine related icons I am/shall be proposing:

	Hospital with emergency facilities	Refer: Proposed Features/Hospital: Emergency
	Hospital without emergency facilites	Refer: Proposed Features/Hospital: Emergency
	Doctor's surgery	Refer: Proposed Features/GP Surgery
	Medical clinic	This proposal
	Dispensing pharmacy	Refer: Proposed Features/Pharmacy
	Non-dispensing pharmacy	Refer: Proposed Features/Pharmacy

The circle icon differentiates the treatment centres ie Hospital, GP Surgery and the clinic from the commercial pharmacies which are square. The solid green background for the Hospital icon indicates in-patient facilities, and similary the white background for the GP Surgery and Clinic which don't. The use of a white centre in the cross for the emergency hospital, makes the icon more visible on the map in comparison to the non-emergency hospital and as it does for the pharmacies.

Batchoy 18 November 2006

Notes and Comments

It has been pointed out to me (Proposed Features/Hospital: Emergency) that these symbols are a little on the light sight and so there is a potenital problem of the showing up well, I am bere for proposing that they be darkened up:

The XML code for all these symbols can be found here.

Batchoy 16:51 21 November 2006 (UTC)

What about remote areas? See comments on GP Surgery ShakespeareFan00 23:25, 22 October 2007 (BST)

PerroVerd 12:07 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with hospital and clinic (or medical center) but maybe instead of creating diferent amenities we can use more attributes. something like "amenity"=>"clinic", "urgencies"=>"yes/no", "small_urgencies"=>"yes/no", "public"=>"yes/no"...

I would prefer to see these as separate amenities, where they are separate. A large health centre containing multiple entities may well be an amenity=clinic but a single GP with one room isn't, likewise a single Osteopath, dentist, you-name-it, nor a group practice of just one type. --DrMark 07:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Developing Countries

I hope someone out there is still watching this. But I'd like to say that OSM has a very western/developed-centric viewpoint, and for developing countries, the clinic is a very important type of health facility, and quite distinct from a hospital or doctor's office (there are usually no doctors, only nurses, at clinics in Ghana at least). --lumanaghana 21:54 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Opinion

I'll vote against this, see why : [1] --Bartv 08:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Strongly in favour. My town maps are not just roads.. Secretlondon 06:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Approve. I appreciate Bartv's slippery-slope argument re things that aren't really geographical features, but I'd say that "My skin has erupted in big red spots, where can I go to have something done about it?" is a pretty fundamental thing for a map to address.

Things like pubs can be added to OSM so it seems useful to add GPs and clinics. I would prefer the term 'health centre' rather than clinic or medical centre so as to encompass things like mental health clinics. In the UK, signs in the NHS blue and white logo and style makes any such centre a useful landmark. Since more services are moving out of hospitals and into the community, they are increasingly numerous and visible. --LeedsTracker 12:24, 14 September 2007 (BST)

I approve this proposal Nako 09:26, 21 September 2007 (BST)

I approve this proposal. In Spain, there are lots of hospital-sized medical centres with no beds, and this covers that perfectly. Ivansanchez 01:38, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I approve this proposal --Andrew T 19:37, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I approve this proposal --fatbozz 23:02, 26 November 2007 (UTC

I approve this proposal --PerroVerd 11:11, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I disapprove this proposal (same as BartTV : too much info kills the info) --PhilippeP 12:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I approve this proposal --Fredyrivera 16:31, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

• I approve this proposal. Strongly. This accurately fits the way medical care is now being done in the UK: there is an emerging trend towards clinics which are not large-hospital-sized, have no beds, are not pharmacies, and are not something else health-related like a (one-man) GP's surgery. --achadwick 22:54, 2 April 2008 (BST)

I approve this proposal with the proviso that it's not instead of the other proposal. --DrMark 07:30, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I approve this proposal --Coco 04:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

i think there is a need for this tag. i would be great to see in one page the real criteria for distinctions between hospital, clinic and gp_surgery. i don´t see them clear right now. also i don´t think the icons work, should be diferent than the pharmacy ones. the visibility is low and are hard to differentiate. the green for medicines and red for cures seems to make more sense. i like the actual hospital one so why not:

is the vote open ??--Sergionaranja 14:33, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Not yet. We should move it along: the template stuff's helping formalising it. I think the criteria for distinguishing the smaller medical services is mainly a matter of numbers of staff, with some other deciders such as degree of specialisation in individual areas and "it's not called a hospital". Pretty much anything between a Great Big Hospital Site (with beds and operating theatres) and a small GP's / medical doctor's office run by a handful of staff is a "clinic". And as Wikipedia notes, what care you can actually expect at a "clinic" varies somewhat, even within countries, but especially between different countries. --achadwick 18:41, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Coming in a bit late, I approve this proposal. -- Earle Martin 16:34, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Coming really late, I do approve this proposal fully. -- Jonás Andradas 9:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

I approve this proposal . It comes very much in handy while differentiating between a hospital and clinic. This feature will seem useful only in high population areas where there are many small clinics . --Pavi 15:25, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I approve this proposal as in my town (Kaunas, Lithuania) there are really big hospitals and a lot of small private clinics. It really needs to be separated. --Pauliusz 18:01, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I approve this proposal and second the comments by Achadwick and Pavi. We need something between a hospital and a doctor's office, especially in neighborhoods that have both. --EdH 05:45, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I approve this proposal. As I mentioned above, it's very important for developing countries. Where do we go next to get this rolling? It seems like the yeas greatly outnumber the nays. --Lumanaghana 22:57, 25 September 2010 (BST)

May I approve this proposal as well? There is a huge difference between a clinic and an hospital in some country. What's the next step to make this proposal a reality? --Zethradon 18:34, 30 September 2011 (BST)

Probably the right thing to do is just get on with it: amenity=clinic created. We could do with some focussed discussion. --achadwick 23:50, 30 September 2011 (BST)

I accept that this is in use, and I sort of like the idea for a middle-sized medical facility tag anyway. So I'll withdraw earlier calls to just let this proposal die off peacefully: I've created amenity=clinic for further refinement and discussion, and have documented it as a de-facto tag. Please *do* contribute, and get involved! --achadwick 23:50, 30 September 2011 (BST)

I approve this proposal .In Romania we have polyclinics where we go to see if we have a cold or something, and they redirect us to hospital or pharmacy, if needed --baditaflorin 19:37, 19 November 2013 (UTC)