Obtaining Medical Records

Today I picked up all the records from Liam's hospital stay.  I requested them three days ago and was told it would take 10-14 days to process.  If you need to obtain your personal or your child's medical records in a shorter amount of time than promised (because you have an appointment with another doctor) here are some helpful hints to follow.

1. As soon as you decide you'll be seeking a second opinion or that a follow up with a different doctor is in order contact the medical records office to fill out a release form.
2. After obtaining, completing and faxing in the release form call the office once again and ask to speak with a supervisor.
3. Explain your situation to the supervisor.  (I have always been a big believer in being nice to strangers, especially strangers that are in a position to help you.  It is not that person's personally philosophy that it should take two weeks to get records and that person will most likely respond to kindness and a clear explanation of what you need and when you need it by.)
4. If you need a copy of any tests that were performed you may need to contact another office.  In our case I needed to contact radiology to obtain a CD copy of the MRI images.  The supervisor from medical records was able to supply me with the phone number and also called radiology herself to give them a heads up.
5. Let both offices know that you will be picking up the records and hand-delivering them at your doctor's appointment.  This is much faster than mail.
6. Be sure to bring with a photo ID when picking up the records.

Please don't ask the medical records department to process your request faster than you actually need it.  If everybody who was asking for their records did that I probably wouldn't have been able to get Liam's records so quickly.  However, if you have a second opinion appoinment scheduled and need the records I hope that you find this process as easy as I did. 

I also learned that if you already have a doctor that you've been seeing and he/she wants the medical records their office can request the records.  Since Liam will be a new patient for Lurie's Children Hospital I needed to obtain the records.  Once he is seen by a doctor there they will be able to ask for access to his records with our permission.