How do you transfer medical records to a new doctor?

Call and ask three things: which records the doctor wants to see before the first visit, which form the office uses to request the rest, and where records should be sent. A new family doctor may want recent visit notes, lab results and your medication list. A cardiologist may want your last heart tests. Each office answers differently, so ask rather than guess.

HIPAA lets one office send records to another for your care without your written authorization, so the new office can ask on its own. Many still have you sign a release form at intake. Sign it. It costs you nothing, and it gives the old office one less reason to wait.

Write down every place that has treated you in the last few years: each doctor's office, the hospital, urgent care, the lab, the imaging center, the physical therapist. Add the dates you were seen and what each one did. One person asking for help on Reddit had seen 'about a dozen different doctors in the last 5 years.' The list adds up fast.

Give the new office this list. It's the most useful thing you can hand over, because an office can only request records from places it knows about. Keep a copy for yourself. Use the tracker below, one row per place, to see what's still missing.

Start with the patient portal. Visit notes, test results and imaging reports can often be downloaded there today, with no request at all.

For anything the portal doesn't show, send a written request to the old office's medical records department, sometimes called release of information. Name the record types and dates you need rather than asking for everything. A complete chart can be long, and the longer the request, the longer the copying. Our free records request letter writes it for you, with specific record types and dates, as a PDF you can print and sign.

This is the request HIPAA protects most. The office has to act within 30 days. The fee can only cover copying labor, supplies, postage and any summary you agree to, or a flat fee of up to $6.50 for an electronic copy of records kept electronically. And the office can't refuse because you owe it money for your care.

Plan on weeks, not days. Under HIPAA an office has 30 days to act on your request for your own records, and it can extend that once by up to 30 more. That can mean 60 days. If the first appointment is a month away, the request should go out today.

Electronic exchange between hospitals has grown, but it isn't universal. In a 2023 survey of US hospitals, 84% said they often sent patients' care summaries to outside providers electronically, up from 71% in 2018, and 73% often received them, up from 54%. Only 43% routinely did all four parts: sending, receiving, finding and using what came in. Doctors' offices weren't part of that survey.

So track each request through its own stages: asked for, sent, received, and confirmed usable by the new office. A fax that landed in the wrong inbox counts as sent and not much else.

Ask the new office, and bring the printouts either way. Some old offices insist on sending records only to another office, and that can take weeks. A printout of your last visit note, recent results and medication list gives the new doctor something to read at the first visit while the official copy is on its way.

The pictures from a scan are the exception. The written imaging report travels like any other document, but if a specialist will want to look at the images themselves, ask the imaging center for the images, on a disc or as a download, and ask the new office how it wants to receive them.

Start with this rule: an office can't withhold your records because you owe it money. It can charge a reasonable, cost-based fee for the copy, but an unpaid bill for your care isn't a reason to refuse.

If the old office will only send to you, or only if you come in and sign, take your own copy. That's the request with the 30-day deadline and the fee limit behind it. Since a 2020 federal court ruling, the 30-day deadline covers a request to send records straight to someone else only for an electronic copy of an electronic record, and the fee limit doesn't apply to it.

If you're asking for a parent or spouse, you can request their records as their personal representative under HIPAA, for example through a healthcare power of attorney or a guardianship. Send a copy of that paperwork with the request. The records request letter has an option for asking on someone else's behalf.