Best Practices for Parent and Sub-Organizations

Healthie's multi-provider capabilities enable organizations to share resources, collaborate across clients, and maintain custom permissions surrounding core business needs to streamline operations, promote cross-collaboration, and offer coordinated care to clients. 

As part of our Enterprise plan, we can set up an additional administrative layer to your account, for advanced administrative purposes. This structure enables for a main Parent Organization configured with sub-organization(s). 

In this article, we dive into best practices for using sub-organizations to ensure the best experience for your organization. 

Understanding Parent and Sub-Organizations

When considering sub-organizations in Healthie, the primary focus should be data separation. This concept is the cornerstone of how sub-organizations function and how they should be utilized effectively. Data separation influences how sub-organizations are configured, managed, and used within the Healthie platform.

Parent Organization Role

• The parent organization acts as an administrative layer that creates and configures sub-organizations.
• Templates and defaults are provided to streamline the setup process, ensuring efficiency and consistency.
• Sub-organizations do not have access to parent organization data. Care workflows such as scheduling, billing, and documentation should be performed at the sub-organization level.

Data Flows

Sub-organizations operate in an isolated, multi-tenant model under the parent organization.

• PHI (Protected Health Information) flows upward from sub-organizations to the parent organization, allowing for reporting and parent-level aggregation.
• Lateral Data Separation: Sub-organizations cannot access each other’s data. For example, Sub-Organization 1 is unaware of Sub-Organization 2 and cannot access its data or PHI.

Data Separation vs. Data Commingling

If data separation is not required and data sharing between sites or branches is desired, sub-organizations may not be the best configuration.

When Are Sub-Organizations a Good Fit?

Sub-organizations are ideal for:

• Healthie Resellers who need to manage distinct clients while maintaining complete data separation.
• Organizations with multiple distinct sites, businesses, or branches that do not require data or patient sharing between accounts – generally these are legal or distinct entities that do not need to have any relationship with other suborgs. 

You'll find more use cases for sub-orgs outlined here.

Parent Organization Configuration

The parent organization has control over key settings and member permissions for sub-organizations. More information here: Using the Sub-Organization Layer. 

Key Configuration Notes

• Permissions, content, and settings are configured at the time of sub-organization creation.
• Subsequent configuration changes should be made by logging into the sub-organization.
• Changes at the parent organization level (e.g., updating a Program) do not automatically update sub-organization configurations.

Guidance for Using Sub-Organizations

Dos

• Do use sub-organizations when complete data isolation is required (e.g., Healthie Resellers).
• Do use the parent organization for initial sub-organization creation and configuration.
• Do use the parent organization to manage new team members for specific sub-organizations:
  • Navigate to the Organization tab in the parent organization.
  • Select Sub-orgs > View the sub-org > Make necessary adjustments.

Don’ts

• Don’t use sub-organizations for data organization or reporting purposes.
• Don’t use sub-organizations if data or patient sharing is required between them.
• Don’t default to using sub-organizations without a clear reason. Reversing this decision can be technically challenging.
• Don’t provide care through the parent organization. Care should always be delivered at the sub-organization level.

Additional Notes

• Scheduling and billing are integral to care delivery and should be performed at the sub-organization level.

Notes and Best Practices for Sub-Orgs

There is no limit to the number of Sub-Orgs that you can have associated with your Master Account, however, it is not possible to delete a Sub-Org once it has been created. You are able to change the access e-mail address to remove the Sub-Org "Switch."

If a Sub-Organization has an active Healthie account that is not associated with your organization, we are unable to directly transfer that account to live within your Sub-Organization (for security, business, or legal reasons). We recommend creating a new account for that member, and if desired, the Sub-Organization can cancel their independent account. 

• Visibility across Sub-Orgs: 
  • Sub-Organizations will have no visibility into each other providers' accounts, or each other's client information. Sub-Orgs are completely silo-ed from each other, and be able to set up their accounts as per a standard account set up, with no insight into other Sub-Org settings and information. 
  • Traditionally, the master Org account functions as a shell account that delivers care through Sub-Orgs.  
  • Please note that when you're viewing the Healthie dashboard through a Sub-Org lens (using the Switch toggle), you can only view the Sub-Org Calendar and Sub-Org Members tabs. Clicking on any tab on the left navigation sidebar will take you back to the master Org account.
  • It is not possible for Sub-Org providers to see other Sub-Orgs, or clients in other Sub-Orgs, unless you indicate that an individual should be part of multiple Sub-Orgs.
  • In order to view Sub-Org details or make any changes to Sub-Orgs, the master account Org administrator needs to first make sure that they have been added to that Sub-Org as a member. After this step, when the master account Org admin switches into that Sub-Org Healthie view, that is the only time they will be able to make any changes to the Sub-Org.
    • Note: If your Org admin has provided you with the appropriate permissions to view Sub-Org details or make changes to Sub-Orgs, and you are unable to view the Switch toggle at the top of your screen, please directly reach our to your Org administrator.
  • It is not possible to "copy a Sub-Org" as information flows from the Master Account to the Sub-Org account.
  • The Reports (left navigation sidebar) > Client List report is the only report that pulls in all Sub-Org data in the Master Org Healthie account. None of the other reports will pull any Sub-Org information or data.  
  • If you have a team member that needs visibility or should be part of multiple Sub-Orgs, we will help you set this up. Please reach out to hello@gethealthie.com to set this up for your account. 
• E-Fax:
  • E-Fax lines can be requested by specific Sub-Orgs for $10 / month. Here are instructions for Sub-Orgs to request an E-Fax line.
  • If you maintain a Universal E-Fax Line in your Master Account that is used by Sub-Orgs, it is unfortunately not possible to assign a E-Fax to a specific sub-org. We therefore recommend having E-Fax for each Sub-Org, if E-Fax is used often by your Organization. 
• Branding: 
  • Sub-Orgs will have the Brand (Logo & Colors) that have been set up on your master account
  • Sub-Orgs can have their own branding so long as the owner of that sub-org has the "Can have their own branding" member permission enabled by an account admin for the master account. 
• Updates to your settings & materials:
  • After a Sub-Org has been created, any updates that you make to Intake Forms, Charting Templates, and Appointment Types in the master account will Automatically apply to the Sub-Org.
  • As the Sub-Org will have access to all master Org account forms, if the Sub-Org has their own forms that they would like to build out, they will have to make copy versions of those master Org account forms in order to both edit and rename them.  
  • Additional features will require that you submit a ticket, when you have materials updated. Please e-mail hello@gethealthie.com with details of what you would like to have updated, and for which Sub-Org.
  • We recommend reaching out to our Support Team, versus leveraging the share forms with colleagues for share programs with colleagues, to take advantage of the fact that updates will automatically apply, versus creating a copy / "snapshot in time"
• Calendar:
  • Sync calendars across your Sub-Organizations
• API: 
  • If you leverage Healthie's API, we can give API keys per Sub-Org, if your partners have a need for direct data feeds or integrations
  • When data is extracted, it would inherently occur on a per Sub-Org basis, to ensure that co-mingling of data is not possible
  • Sub-Orgs would only be able to access data within their Sub-Org, which is a built-in added security layer