You Have a Right to Them

Let's start with this first. Your medical records belong to you in the sense that matters: you have a legal right to get a copy of them.

A practice cannot refuse because you have an unpaid balance, nor can they ask why you want them. They have to respond within a set timeframe, and if they hold your records electronically, you can ask for them electronically rather than as paper or a CD.

Most people never ask, and a lot of practices are not set up to make it easy.

Why It's Harder Than It Should Be

The main reason is that your records were never in one place to begin with.

Every practice you have ever visited keeps its own chart on you. Your primary care doctor has one, a specialist you saw twice has another, and the urgent care you visited while travelling has a third. These systems were built to serve the practice, and the records seldom follow you as the different medical record systems don't have a direct way to talk to each other.

There is a second problem that catches almost everyone; practices get acquired. The cardiology office you have gone to for years may now be owned by a larger hospital system, and when that happens your chart quietly moves into the parent organization's system. The sign on the building might not change, the organization name you need in order to find your records does.

So people search for their doctor's practice, find nothing, and assume the records are gone. They are not; They are filed under a name nobody told you about.

The Three Usual Routes

The patient portal: If the practice uses one, this is the fastest option. You will usually find a records or documents section where you can view and download. The catch is that you need an account at every practice separately, and each one means a different login.

Asking the office directly: Call or visit and ask for a copy of your records. Many practices have a form. Be specific about what you want and what format, because "everything" sometimes produces a summary rather than the full chart. Ask for an electronic copy if you would rather not receive paper.

An app that collects them for you. Several services connect to multiple practices on your behalf and pull your records into one place. This is what we do, which we will come back to at the end.

What to Have Ready

Requests stall for boring reasons, so it helps to have these to hand:

• The name you were registered under, which matters if you have married, divorced, or go by a shortened version of your first name

• Your date of birth

• The approximate dates you were seen

• And the practice name as it was when you went there, even if you think it may have changed since

If you are not sure what you need, ask for your complete record rather than a summary. A summary is a condensed document that leaves out most of the detail, including the notes your doctor wrote during the visit, which are often the most useful part.

If a Practice Makes It Difficult

Some will. A few things are worth knowing:

• They can charge a reasonable fee for copies, but it should reflect the cost of producing them, and electronic copies downloaded from a portal are usually free.

• They cannot require you to explain your reasons.

• They cannot refuse to provide records over an unpaid bill.

• And if they simply do not respond, you can file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, which enforces this right.

Most of the time it does not get that far. Persistence and being specific about what you want resolves it.

Where We Fit

We built Consolidate Health to do this part for people.

You tell us the doctors you remember, by name or by practice, and we find the right system even when the practice has been acquired and is now filed under something else. You authorize us to retrieve your records, we pull them from each provider, and they come back in one place rather than across six portals with six passwords that you have to keep entering each time you want to access your patient portals.

Nothing moves without you approving it, each time, for that specific request. Your records are yours, and the only thing we do is go get them.

If you have been putting off tracking down your history, it is worth the twenty minutes. Most people are surprised by how much is in there that nobody ever showed them.

If you'd like to sign up for Consolidate Heath's web app for free and start seeing all your records in one place, click the link here to get started.