Institutional Hierarchy

MedCES separates the institutional hierarchy from the other relationships a medical college has. This is important because a regulator, university, counselling authority, hospital, department, programme, and facility do not all belong in one tree.

The 3L3T operating model

The three layers describe whose work MedCES supports:

Layer	Who it serves	Example
Individual	Candidate, student, faculty member, or another authorised person	A student views their timetable or submits logbook evidence
Institution	A medical college or teaching institution	An institute plans a curriculum, admits students, and runs academic delivery
Governance	A trust, society, directorate, university group, or another body that runs institutes	A governing body reviews authorised institutes and common setup

The three tiers describe where access is positioned:

Tier	Normal scope	Example
Governance	Tenant or governing organisation	A Tenant Admin manages institutes inside one tenant
Institution	One institute	An Institute Admin manages one medical college
Operating unit	Department or department unit	A Department Admin works in General Medicine

The layer or tier does not grant access by itself. Access is assigned through the model described in Roles and Access.

The institutional LTREE

The access-inheritable hierarchy is deliberately small:

Tenant
└── Governing organisation (optional)
    └── Institute
        └── Department
            └── Department unit (optional)

A single-institute tenant may omit the governing organisation:

Tenant
└── Institute
    └── Department

The hierarchy records administrative containment. Each node has one current parent, a stable identity, a type, validity dates, and a path. Departments that do not use units remain valid; MedCES must not create artificial units merely to complete setup.

What does not belong in the LTREE

Regulatory and other external bodies

NMC, an affiliating university, MCC, a state counselling authority, and a separately owned hospital remain outside the tenant hierarchy. They are registered as external organisations and connected to an institute, programme, intake, or site through typed relationships.

Those relationships may enable reporting or validation. They do not automatically grant the external organisation’s users access to institute records.

Programmes, courses, and curricula

An MBBS programme belongs to the institute, but it is an academic record rather than an organisational child. Courses and curriculum versions are also institute-owned records.

Institute
├── Department structure
├── Institute programmes
├── Course catalogue
└── Curriculum versions

Programmes connect to departments through academic relationships. For example, MBBS is run by the institute and delivered by several departments. It is not placed under one department.

Faculty and students

People are not hierarchy nodes. Faculty are connected to institutes, departments, and units through effective-dated assignments. Students are connected through programme enrolment and cohort membership.

Head of Department, Unit Head, faculty designation, teaching assignment, and system access are separate records.

Facilities

Facilities use their own containment tree:

Campus
└── Building
    └── Floor
        └── Room, laboratory, ward, OPD, or another location

A ward can be allocated to a department unit without becoming a child of that unit. This allows the location or allocation to change without changing the institutional hierarchy.

External relationships

One institute may have several relationships at the same time:

Relationship	Example	Access inherited?
Governs	Trust or DME governs an institute	Only when the governing organisation is an LTREE ancestor and a user has a grant there
Regulates	NMC regulates an institute or programme	No
Affiliates	Health-sciences university affiliates an institute or programme	No
Examines	University conducts professional examinations	No
Counsels	MCC or a state authority conducts counselling	No
Provides clinical site	Separately owned hospital provides a learning site	No

An external relationship can carry validity dates, identifiers, approved intake, programme scope, evidence, and reporting obligations without changing the institute’s parent.

Example: an MBBS institute

MedCES tenant
└── ABC Educational Trust
    └── ABC Medical College
        ├── Anatomy
        ├── Physiology
        ├── General Medicine
        │   ├── Medicine Unit 1
        │   └── Medicine Unit 2
        └── General Surgery

Separate records connect the institute to its work:

NMC -> regulates -> ABC Medical College and MBBS intake
State Health University -> affiliates and examines -> MBBS
State Counselling Authority -> counsels -> MBBS admission cycle
ABC Medical College -> owns -> MBBS programme and curriculum
General Medicine -> leads or contributes -> institute courses
Medicine Unit 1 -> eligible to deliver -> selected clinical postings

The institute structure remains stable even when a university relationship, counselling cycle, curriculum version, faculty assignment, or ward allocation changes.

Data model

Institutional records

Record	Important fields	Purpose
`org.tenant`	code, name, operating model, status	Tenant isolation and top-level ownership
`org.entity`	`tenant_id`, entity type, stable code, current version, status	Stable identity for a governing organisation, institute, department, or unit
`org.entity_version`	`entity_id`, name, parent, `path`, validity, approval	Effective-dated position and identity in the LTREE
`org.external_organisation`	type, legal name, identifiers, jurisdiction, status	Regulator, university, counselling body, external hospital, or another outside organisation
`org.authority_relationship`	external organisation, subject type and ID, relationship type, validity, evidence	Typed relationship with an institute, programme, intake, or site

Record group	Relationship to the hierarchy
Institute programme, course, curriculum	Owned by an institute through `institute_id`
Faculty association	Connects a person to institute, department, or unit for a valid period
Student enrolment	Connects a student to institute programme, curriculum version, and cohort
Facility node	Belongs to a separate facility containment tree owned by an institute or approved site
Role grant	Uses an LTREE entity as its access scope

Hierarchy rules

Every tenant has exactly one tenant root.
A governing organisation is optional.
An institute belongs to the tenant and may sit beneath one governing organisation.
A department belongs to one institute.
A department unit, where used, belongs to one department.
A node cannot be moved beneath itself or one of its descendants.
Structural changes are effective-dated and preserve the earlier path.
A node that has been used by operational records cannot be physically deleted.
External relationships never enter the LTREE.
Programmes, courses, curricula, people, and facilities never become LTREE children.

Process-layer responsibilities

The organisation service must:

create and validate hierarchy paths;
enforce valid parent-child combinations;
apply tenant isolation to every node;
detect path cycles and code collisions;
calculate the impact of a move, closure, or split before approval;
preserve the hierarchy that was valid when a historical action occurred;
provide descendant scopes to the access service;
keep external relationships separate from access-inheritable relationships.