Objective:

• To understand applicability groups

Environment:

• PolicyStat systems with multiple sites

Additional Information:

Establishing and modifying Applicability groups is an action taken by PolicyStat Staff, but it is helpful to understand what Applicability groups are to understand how they can be beneficial for managing content across a system or network of sites.

Answer:

Applicability Groups: Defined

As the name implies, Applicability groups define which site or sites a policy applies to. Each PolicyStat site is a part of an Applicability group, even if it is a single site.

For example, Lonestar Hospital is a single, standalone PolicyStat site without any connected sites. The Applicability group is just Lonestar Hospital.

Connected / System Sites

If multiple PolicyStat sites are connected through a system or network, policy content can be shared across multiple sites without creating new copies on each site. When changes are made to the content from one location, the changes reflect automatically in all instances of the policy.

The most common Applicability group is a System-Wide group, but smaller groupings can also be generated if needed.

Example: Ashwaubenon Regional Health 

For example, the Ashwaubenon Regional Health system has 5 PolicyStat sites:

• Ashwaubenon North Hospital (https://arh-north.policystat.com)
• Ashwaubenon West Hospital (https://arh-west.policystat.com)
• Ashwaubenon South Hospital (https://arh-south.policystat.com)
• Lombardi Medical Center Laboratory (https://arh-llc.policystat.com)
• Lambeau Diagnostic Laboratory (https://arh-ldl.policystat.com)

Policies that apply only to the lone site can be placed in their respective Applicability group. For example, Ashwaubenon South policies are placed in the South Hospital Applicability group, and those policies will not be visible on any of the four other PolicyStat sites.

Policies that apply to system-wide would be placed into the ARH - System Wide Applicability group. Changes made to the content of these policies will automatically update the content where the policy appears on each site across the system.

Laboratory-only policies can be placed in the Laboratories Applicability group. As the Labs group contains the Lombardi Medical Center Laboratory and Lambeau Diagnostic Laboratory sites, policies in this group will be visible on either laboratory site, but will not from any of the three hospital sites.

For more on selecting an Applicability for a policy, see this article.