Best Practices: Data Management
# devn
Ni
10/27/2025, 5:06 PMI'm considering building out our new version of provider & patient-facing app with Medplum. Curious about the best practice here -- does your app store all data in Medplum's datastore, or store PHI data in Medplum's datastore and non-PHI data (e.g., things unique to your own app) in a separate relational database? Thanks!
r
reshma
10/27/2025, 6:21 PMHi Ni! So our app suite (provider.medplum.com and foomedical.com) do not use any datastores other than Medplum, and it is possible that you can model what you need in FHIR and use it as the primary store. Any guidance on what the Non-PHI stuff is? Like purchases/commerce?
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Ni
10/27/2025, 9:15 PMHey @reshma ! Great to hear from you. For example, I want to track the provider credentialing workflow (application status, checklist, background-check, review approvals, etc.) and Provider Payouts, Rates, and Plan Participation. Do you suggest we store the above in Medplum FHIR datastore?
r
reshma
10/27/2025, 9:37 PMSo that would be a combination of ProviderDirectory https://www.medplum.com/docs/administration/provider-directory/provider-credentials
And ChargeItemDefinition https://www.medplum.com/docs/provider/visits#how-to-set-up-chargeitems
And Organization
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Ni
10/27/2025, 11:33 PMGot it. Yeah, these make sense
Ni
10/28/2025, 12:14 AM@reshma I got some advice to use multi-tenancy projects for our use case. I'm curious about your thoughts.
As an MSO company, we need to see all patients across practices and assign or move patients between practices. Each provider technically has their own practice, but in some cases, they work on the same patient. (e.g., a speech therapist and an occupational therapist work on the same patient.) Instead of multi-tenancy, I think we can achieve this by:
* Use one Medplum Project (single FHIR datastore)
* Use AccessPolicies and Compartment-based rules to define who can see what:
* Each provider/practice has an AccessPolicy restricting them to their patient panel (via Organization, PractitionerRole, or custom tag).
* MSO admins have a global AccessPolicy that can see and modify everything.
* Use a “Practice” or “Organization” resource to represent each practice and link patients/providers to it.
Any thoughts/feedback would be greatly appreciated!
d
Daniel
10/28/2025, 8:26 PMHi @Ni, while reviewing the blog I came across this article that might be useful to you.
https://www.medplum.com/blog/multi-tenant-mso
Daniel
10/28/2025, 8:29 PMI’m still getting up to speed with Medplum, so it might be worth waiting for @reshma feedback too 🙂
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Ni
10/28/2025, 8:42 PMAmazing! Thank you for sharing this!
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