How to derive NHS hierarchy from ORD
In order to derive NHS hierarchy information (High Level Health Authority and National Grouping) from Organisation Reference Data (ORD), the relationship meta data must be used. There are various ‘named relationships’ in ORD which describe how one organisation entity is linked to another.
1 July 2022 changes to naming of CCGs and STP
This page was created before the 1 July 2022. Any reference to Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) should now be the new Sub ICB Location. Any reference to STP should now be (integrated care board (ICB).
Author: Organisation Reference Data (ORD) Changes Project Team, NHS Digital
Published: 9 October 2019
Version: 1.0
Named relationship types in ORD
The definitions of Named Relationships within ORD can be found within Appendix 1 of the ORD Data Item Catalogue.
Key examples include:
- RE2 – “Is A Subdivision of”
- RE4 – “Is Commissioned by”
- RE5 – “Is Located in the Geography of”
Relationships are held against the ‘source’ organisation, rather than the ‘target’ organisation (see table below for further details).
Relationship rules
A spreadsheet is available which defines the relationship rules supported within ORD between the different types of organisations. This document provides guidance on which type of relationship to choose to map XML data to any existing hierarchies.
The ‘ORD XML Relationship Rules’ spreadsheet is published within the ancillary.zip file on the XML Organisation Data Products webpage.
As examples, extracted below are the relationships held for prescribing cost centres (including GP Practices), and clinical commissioning groups (CCG).
The above shows that customers would use active ‘RE4’ commissioning relationship held against a prescribing cost centre/GP practice record to derive the CCG. The ‘RE5’ geographic relationship held against the CCG record would then give the NHS England Region (Local Office).
For sites, customer would use active ‘RE6’ operated by relationships to derive the parent organisation.
Example
In the current GP Practice file (epraccur.csv), fields 3, 4 and 15 contain hierarchical data as follows:
The same prescribing cost centre/GP practice record is represented in XML as follows, with the same hierarchical data highlighted:
https://directory.spineservices.nhs.uk/ORD/2-0-0/organisations/A81001?_format=xml
Then access the ‘00K’ CCG record to derive the High Level Health Authority:
https://directory.spineservices.nhs.uk/ORD/2-0-0/organisations/00K?_format=xml
Then access the ‘Q74’ High Level Health Authority record to derive the National Grouping:
https://directory.spineservices.nhs.uk/ORD/2-0-0/organisations/Q74?_format=xml
Further information
For further queries regarding deriving NHS hierarchy from ORD, or general queries regarding ODS data, please contact [email protected]
Last edited: 4 February 2025 9:32 am