Overview of Organizational Units

For reporting purposes, HIPAA Guard can distinguish one or more organizational units within a covered entity, such as Departments and Offices, and within the same database, can group covered entities into higher-level organizational units, such as Campuses, Regions and Districts. Read one or both of the topics below, depending on your particular situation. If you do not need to track and group multiple Covered Entities, we highly recommend you skip the second section below to avoid confusion.

If you set up organizational units within a covered entity or group covered entities into higher organizational groups, some of the reports generated by HIPAA Guard will be able to be sorted by these units/groups. If reporting by these units is not needed, we recommend you not use the organizational units, in an effort to keep your tracking as simplified as possible.

Tracking organizational units within a Covered Entity.

Within each covered entity, HIPAA Guard can track four organizational levels: Point of Service Location, Office, Department and Division. Offices are linked to Departments, and Departments are linked to Divisions. Point of Service Locations can and should be distinguished to track where certain activities occurred, such as documenting a disclosure. Each Point of Service location may be linked to an Office, Department and Division.

If you are going to track organizational units within a covered entity, your organization might look like this diagram:

You do not need to track all the levels shown. You could, for example, track one level within the Covered Entity (such as Departments), and still have multiple Point of Service Locations. You can also change the labels of these units to match the designations in your organization. If you wish to do this, you should do it prior to taking the following step.

See the topic, Set Up Organization Codes Within A Covered Entity, to establish what the units will be for each covered entity.

To complete the organizational set-up, see Set Up Covered Entities.

Tracking groups of Covered Entities.

If you are tracking multiple covered entities, and you want to group the entities into higher organizational levels, such as Campuses, Districts or Regions (these are the HIPAA Guard default labels that can be changed), your organization might look like this

To have your database established to track and report by these groups, you must:

  1. Ensure that the checkbox for Entity Group Tracking is checked, and change the labels for the groups, if desired; then

  2. Set up Covered Entity Groups.

  3. Finally, in the [Setup Covered Entity Information] window, click the ORGANIZATION tab to link each Covered Entity to the appropriate group(s).

When reading through these topics, depending on the links you click, it is easy to get lost (or seem to be lost) in the links! To avoid this, after reading the topics above, set up your organizational units in the order below. Nothing will happen if you don't follow this order, but following the order will make the job easier.

  1. Set the parameters to track organizational units within a Covered Entity and, if applicable, set the parameter to track covered entity groups. You can also change the organizational unit labels in this screen.

  2. For units within a covered entity, set up the organizational codes and their descriptions:

    1. Point of Service Locations

    2. Offices

    3. Departments

    4. Divisions

  3. For units above a covered entity (i.e. Entity Groups), set up the organizational codes and their descriptions:

    1. Campuses

    2. Districts

    3. Regions

  4. Set up one or more covered entities. Link each covered entity to the appropriate Campus, District and Region, if you are tracking at these levels.

  5. Set up one or more clinic or treatment sites.

    A clinic or treatment site is an organizational entity used in HIPAA Guard to distinguish one physical location from another. It is LARGER than a Point of Service location, which would be a location within a clinic or treatment site. A clinic or treatment site is independent of an organizational hierarchy, which exists on paper only (vs. existing in a physical location).

    The number of clinics or treatment sites that you can set up depends on the licensing for your HIPAA Guard program. Some licenses restrict use to a limited number of sites.

    To set up a clinic or treatment site:

    1. From the SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION tab of the Home Launch Pad, click the Clinic or Treatment Site button.

    2. Click the Add button.

    3. Complete the information on the [Enter Clinic or Treatment Site] window.

    4. Click OK to close the window.

    5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 to add each licensed clinic/treatment site.

    6. Click Closeto return to the Home Launch pad.

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