See also: SystmOne training document: Organisation Groups (Help > Support & FAQs > Documents & Training Guides)

Organisation Groups allow the connecting of services to publish content such as reports and templates. The ICB and Ardens use Organisation Groups to publish content to member surgeries/services.

As a SystmOne surgery within the Suffolk and North East Essex footprint, you are likely in at least two Organisation Groups:

1. An ICB or Sub-ICB group. e.g. SNEE ICB - East Suffolk GPs
2. Arden's Ltd

You may also be in other groups, such as a PCN Organisation Group to standardise working and SystmOne layouts with member surgeries.

See which Organisation Groups you are a member of on the Organisation Groups screen (Setup > Users & Policy).

Published/share the following with Organisation Groups

1. Reports*
2. Template Maintenance*
3. Questionnaires*
4. Patient Status Alerts*
5. Form Maintenance*
6. Protocols*
7. URLs & Program Maintenance (listed as "URLs")*
8. Word Letter Templates*
9. Drug Formularies
10. Toolbars (Organisation Preferences) 
11. Tree Configuration (Organisation Preferences)
12. Automatic Consultations
13. Configured Lists
14. Menu Bar Configuration
15. User Preference Defaults
16. Patient Group Directions
17. Appointment Templates
18. Care Plan Templates
19. Goal Template Maintenance
20. Read Code Significance
21. View Maintenance
22. Report Output Maintenance
23. Message Preset Maintenance
24. Letter Templates (Pre-'Word Letter Templates', unavailable in newer units)

*These items are shown on the 'Shared Content' tab when viewing the Organisation Group screen.

Reporting across an Organisation Group

It's possible to set an Organisation Group to allow reporting on patient data across all services in the group. Ensure you raise the release/sharing of patient data with your Data Protection Officer before joining a group with this reporting enabled or creating one with other services, including within a PCN.

Sharing patient data across a PCN

By default, it would not be legal to allow reporting of patient data in this way across a PCN:

PCNs are not legal entities so cannot share patient data without full and documented data sharing agreements and suitable privacy notices. PCNs should not try to enable reporting in their Organisation Groups without discussing this with the Data Protection Officers of each surgery to confirm if this would be legal data processing for all.

Creating a PCN Organisation Group?

Some suggestions:

1. Discuss and plan using an Organisation Group with your fellow-surgeries, including with content builders/maintainers (templates/reports/toolbars etc).
2. Agree where the Organisation Group be hosted from (one service will be owner)
3. Only allow content to be published by the service that hosts the group
   By default, every service can publish; however, experience tells us that allowing this leads to complications over time.
4. Host the group under a suitable parent in the directory. Such as the ICB, Sub-ICB. The parent group has no controls/rights to your Organisation Group, it simply makes it easier for all involved to find them in the directory. If you want to create your Organisation Group under Yorkshire, no one will stop  you.

Planning on leaving/deleting an Organisation Group?

If leaving or closing an Organisation Group, it is important all the items above are reviewed to confirm what content may be lost and any impacts.

Ensure you check each screen/item (listed above) to ensure you do not require these items. Where needed you could also create a copy of items beore leaving/deleting; however, if items are from a paid service, ensure you have the owner's permission.