Inside the Survivor’s Guide

We recommend requesting your records around 15- 30 days after you were discharged.

To obtain your records you must complete a Release of Health Information form from your specific hospital(s). The form is usually available on the hospital’s website under “patient” or “medical records”. You may call the main hospital phone number and ask to be connected with the medical records department. Once you complete the form you can send it back by mail, email, or fax. If you were treated in multiple hospitals, you will need to request records from each separate hospital. Some hospitals outsource their medical records to a company that specializes in document storage. If that is the case, you will deal directly with the vendor rather than the hospital.

Most hospitals or record storage companies will charge a fee. It can be a flat fee or per page. Flat fee charges may differ depending on how the records are sent. Usually, email is the least expensive. However, you may have too many pages of records for them to be emailed. Hospitals typically do not charge if the records are being used for your follow up care. You may ask your healthcare provider to request a copy and ask them to give it to you. Or, you may negotiate fees with the hospital or medical records’ services. Your records may also be available in your digital platform account (for example, mychart).

One of the best ways to begin to read your records is to organize them by grouping them into categories. These can be progress notes, operative reports, lab results, imaging reports, etc. Then, put those groupings into date order. We recommend reading the progress notes and operative reports first. If you received CPR there will likely be a “code blue record” or “code blue sheet” or sometimes the information may be included in the anesthesia record.

You usually have the option to get a full copy or a summary copy of your hospital stay. A summary copy is usually sufficient in assisting you with understanding the over course of your care. Summary copies typically include healthcare provider notes, operative reports, consult notes, health history, test results, and the discharge summary. A summary copy reduces the total number of pages of your records.

In some cases, you may want to have a full and complete set of records. Full records usually include: lab values, blood transfusions records, medications, measurements of fluids, and heart rate strips.