In my local hospital, every ward occupies a floor or half-floor in a 6-floor building. I’d like to tag the ward names with level= somehow but there doesn’t seem to exist a tag for wards. How should I approach this? It’s easier to map a shopping center than a hospital, it seems.
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I looked into this a couple of years ago and landed in the conclusion that wards doesn’t have a tagging scheme. This doesn’t seem to have changed. But I would very much like to have a way of describing common hospital features like wards.
Looking at the other tags available at Key:healthcare - OpenStreetMap Wiki , it seems that all that’s missing is healthcare=ward or healthcare=hospital_ward, all the other tags already exist like speciality and, in my case, level. This wouldn’t collide with building tags for hospitals where each ward has its own building.
I think healthcare=hospital_ward would work. Maybe a good proposal for the wiki?
Edit: I found this old proposal: Proposal:Healthcare=department - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Nice find! I wonder why nothing is happening in the thread and there are no replies in the mailing list.
Have used a few times, only ones in relation to medical centers where ‘ward’ is part of the key.
Tag:emergency=emergency_ward_entrance - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Emergency ward - OpenStreetMap Wiki
“Department” is not exactly the same as “ward”
Another problem as seen in universities is different terms may be used for different levels in the hierarchy. This further complicated by the department=store_section feature in =department_store or =supermarket , instead of being an attribute. Format-wise, there is a significant deviation using department= / faculty= for names, which is an understandable need.
I’d say that perfect is the enemy of good here, in the thread with Healthcare=department proposal there’s already a whole discussion about semantics and structure, and 3 years later there’s still no way to put wards on the map.
Here is a community thread I opened about this exact topic:
I also created the proposal about departments, but didn’t have the strength to continue with the voting phase 
@Lucarmaps above has found your thread, I decided to just use your tagging and health_facility:type=department because anything is better than not being able to map a hospital.
Now waiting for a revert from someone opinionated
I’m sure no one will revert it, the question is if it’s ever going to be featured on any of the big renderers or apps. It’s pretty important info in my opinion. That’s why I’m happy my tag is being used! 
Not “big”, but it is used: https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/healthcare=department#projects, visible here.
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It’s fine for a careful approach to such details. Functionally they are different. You visit the patients staying in a ward. You see the doctor, undergo procedures, or get tests and results in some department.
At least you can add treat:inpatient= , although it’s not the same as inpatients staying there. Someone used capacity:inpatient | Keys | OpenStreetMap Taginfo , but it can be for other capacities. beds=yes is unfortunately not the best format, while you may consider it.
I’m an advocate of health_specialty:*= , but not the meaninglessly suffixed *:type=