MedicalBusiness inherits from LocalBusiness plus commits to medical-vertical rules.
MedicalBusiness inherits from LocalBusiness in the schema.org type hierarchy but adds medical-specific properties and commits the entity to medical-vertical evaluation 1 . The added properties include medicalSpecialty (an enumerated list of MedicalSpecialty values), availableService (a roll-up of MedicalProcedure, MedicalTest, MedicalTherapy nodes), and the inherited properties from MedicalOrganization (healthPlanNetworkId, isAcceptingNewPatients).
The schema choice routes the entity into different evaluation rules. LocalBusiness reads against generic local-business signals: NAP consistency, hours of operation, payment methods, customer reviews. MedicalBusiness reads against medical-vertical signals: NPI registry chaining, ABMS board-certification alignment, state medical board licensure, MedicalSpecialty enumeration alignment. A medical practice marked as LocalBusiness surfaces in generic local results but forgoes the medical-specific Knowledge Graph chaining that drives medical-query results.
MedicalClinic. Hospital. Dentist. Physician.
MedicalClinic, Hospital, Dentist, and Physician are schema.org subtypes of MedicalBusiness 2 . A multi-physician group running a clinic uses MedicalClinic. A hospital uses Hospital. A solo dentistry practice uses Dentist. A solo specialist or a physician's professional Person node uses Physician (which inherits from both Person and MedicalOrganization, the structural bridge that lets the byline carry both author and provider attributes).
The subtype choice carries through to Knowledge Graph reconciliation. Google reconciles the entity against external feeds appropriate to the subtype: Hospital reconciles against AHA hospital registries, Physician against NPPES 5 and ABMS, MedicalClinic against the group's NPI Type 2 registration. Subtype-specific properties populate against the practice's actual operating shape.
Controlled vocabulary. Arbitrary strings are not parsed.
The medicalSpecialty property accepts MedicalSpecialty enumeration values from schema.org 3 . Examples: Cardiovascular, Dermatologic, ObstetricsAndGynecology, Oncologic, Orthopedic, PlasticSurgery, PrimaryCare, Surgical. A multi-specialty group populates the array with every specialty the practice serves. A solo specialist populates with the single specialty the physician is board-certified in.
The schema.org enumeration is the controlled vocabulary. Arbitrary specialty strings outside the enumeration are not parsed by Google's structured-data validator 4 . Sub-specialty distinctions (e.g., interventional cardiology versus electrophysiology within Cardiovascular) get articulated in the availableService roll-up rather than in medicalSpecialty.
MedicalProcedure, MedicalTest, MedicalTherapy nodes.
availableService takes a list of MedicalProcedure, MedicalTest, or MedicalTherapy nodes that the business offers. Each service node carries its own name, description, and (where applicable) code. MedicalProcedure for surgical and procedural offerings, MedicalTest for diagnostic offerings, MedicalTherapy for ongoing-treatment offerings.
The roll-up disambiguates the practice's actual service offering from generic specialty claims. A dermatology practice's medicalSpecialty says Dermatologic; the availableService roll-up names the specific procedures (Mohs surgery, biopsy, photodynamic therapy) the practice provides. The roll-up reads as the practice's catalogue, machine-readable.
The schema choice and the property population are baked into the medical practice SEO architecture at Praxis at site-build time, not retrofit after launch. The schema layer is structural; changing it later is more expensive than getting it right.