Restricting Staff to Specific Patients

Patient groups let you limit which patients a staff member can see. For example, Provider A can see only the patients in Group A, and cannot find or open the charts of patients in Group B who belong to Provider B. This article walks through setting that up and testing it before you roll it out.

How it works

Two kinds of permissions work together, and a restricted user needs both:

• Patient groups control which patients a user can see.

• Model permission groups (such as Clinical read and Profile write) control what a user can do, such as opening charts, searching, and scheduling.

Every instance also has an All Patients group. Anyone who has it can see every patient, so it must be removed from anyone you want to restrict.

See User Permissions for a full description of each model permission group and how restricted access appears to users.

Before you start

• Patient permissions must be turned on for your instance. Contact your Canvas team to confirm this before you begin.

• You need access to Settings with the Staff Permissions Access group to manage patient groups and staff permissions.

Step 1: Create patient groups

1. Go to Settings > Practice: Patient groups.

2. Create one patient group for each provider or team whose patients should be kept separate.

3. Check Use for permissions on each group. Without this, the group exists but does not restrict anything.

4. Add the right patients to each group. A patient can belong to more than one group if more than one provider or team needs access.

See Patient Groups for adding members manually or keeping membership up to date automatically.

Step 2: Assign groups to staff

Go to Settings > Practice: Staff Permissions, select the staff member, and update their groups.

For a restricted user, add:

• Their patient group (for example, "Provider A Patients")

• The model permission groups they need to do their work. A typical clinical user needs:

  • Clinical read

  • Clinical write

  • Profile read

  • Profile write

  • Document Read

  • Document Write

  • Schedule write

  • Printing Access

Make sure the restricted user does not have the All Patients group.

For staff who need every patient (for example, front desk, billing, or administrators), keep the All Patients group in place.

Step 3: Test before rolling out

Test with two staff accounts: one restricted user and one control user who has All Patients. Pick one patient who is in the restricted user's group and one who is not.

Restricted user

Control user

The control user confirms that the patient and chart exist, so a hidden result for the restricted user reflects the permission rather than a missing record.

Things to know

• "See all patients" in search. By default, a restricted user who clicks "See all patients" at the bottom of search results can see the names of patients outside their group, but cannot open their charts. This lets staff check whether a patient already exists before creating a duplicate. If your organization prefers that restricted users never see those names, contact your Canvas team. With that option on, staff cannot tell that a patient already has a chart elsewhere in your instance, so plan for how new patients are created and how duplicates are caught.

• Assigned items. Items assigned to a user for a patient they cannot access, such as new lab results, will not be visible to them. Make sure each user's group includes every patient whose items are routed to them.

• Keeping groups current. Patient group membership does not follow care team changes on its own. Update membership manually, or keep it in sync automatically as described in Patient Groups.

Troubleshooting

Related Resources

• Patient Groups - Create patient groups and manage their membership

• User Permissions - Model permission groups and how object permissions affect users

• Managing Patient Care Teams - Assign care team members to a patient