Why Are Patients Still Responsible for Bringing Their Medical Records with Them?

Healthcare has never generated or stored more patient information.

Yet a patient can walk into a new physician’s office and still hear a familiar request:

“Can you contact your other providers and have them send us your medical records?”

For patients who receive most of their care within a single health system, this problem may be less noticeable. But healthcare rarely operates within such clean boundaries.

A patient may see a primary care physician affiliated with one health system, a cardiologist in another, an independent orthopedic specialist, an imaging center, a laboratory, an urgent care facility, and perhaps a hospital while traveling.

Every encounter adds another piece to the patient’s medical history.

The patient is one person. Their medical history may be scattered across numerous organizations and systems.

Despite tremendous advances in electronic health records and healthcare interoperability, patients can still find themselves responsible for connecting those pieces.

When the Patient Becomes the Health Information Exchange

Anyone who has changed physicians, sought a second opinion, or received care outside their usual health system may recognize the process.

Which physicians have you seen? Where was your last MRI performed? What medications have you previously taken? When did you have that procedure? Can you get us a copy of the report? Can you ask your previous physician to send us the records?

The patient may then have to remember which organization has the information, locate the appropriate portal or medical records department, submit a request, obtain the records, and make sure the information reaches the new provider.

Federal data demonstrates that this remains a real problem.

According to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), 21% of individuals who visited a healthcare provider reported in 2022 that they had to bring a prior test result, such as an X-ray or MRI, to an appointment. In 2024, 10% reported having to redo a test or procedure because the earlier results were unavailable.

ONC describes these findings as evidence of persistent gaps in the information needed to inform patient care and follow-up.

Now consider experiencing this process while managing cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, multiple chronic conditions, or the healthcare needs of an aging parent.

The inconvenience can quickly become a significant burden.

Patients Should Know Their History. They Shouldn’t Have to Reconstruct It.

Patients should be active participants in their healthcare. Access to their medical information is an important part of that participation.

Under HIPAA, individuals generally have the right to access a broad range of protected health information contained in designated record sets maintained by covered healthcare providers and health plans, subject to limited exceptions.

But there is an important distinction between giving patients access to their medical information and making patients responsible for assembling a clinically meaningful medical history from multiple healthcare organizations.

Patients cannot reasonably be expected to remember every laboratory result, medication change, imaging finding, procedure, diagnosis, specialist recommendation, hospitalization, or previous treatment decision that could become important during a future episode of care.

They also may not know which parts of that history could be clinically relevant to the provider treating them today.

A patient can explain what they remember.

A longitudinal medical record can provide a broader view of what actually occurred.

The Information Exists. The Challenge Is Bringing It Together.

Healthcare has made enormous progress in digitizing and exchanging medical information.

Electronic health records, health information exchanges, standardized APIs, information-blocking requirements, and nationwide interoperability initiatives are making more health information electronically accessible.

The federal Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA, is designed specifically to advance nationwide health information exchange across organizational and technology boundaries.

That progress is significant.

But making information electronically exchangeable and turning information from multiple sources into a comprehensive, clinically useful longitudinal history are not necessarily the same thing.

A patient’s information may exist across hospitals, physician practices, specialists, laboratories, pharmacies, imaging facilities, payers, health information exchanges, and other sources.

A provider’s EHR may contain an excellent record of what occurred within that organization without necessarily providing a complete picture of what occurred throughout the patient’s healthcare journey.

That distinction matters.

What Could Be Missing From the Picture?

Consider a physician seeing a new patient.

The information immediately available may include current diagnoses, medications, laboratory results, and recent encounters.

But elsewhere there could be relevant imaging, previous medication trials, specialist evaluations, hospitalizations, procedures, allergies or intolerances, laboratory trends, or other clinical history.

No single missing record automatically changes a clinical decision.

But collectively, fragmented information can leave providers without potentially relevant context that exists elsewhere.

Fragmentation can also create additional administrative work.

Clinical staff may spend time contacting other providers, requesting records, monitoring incoming documents, searching external systems, and reviewing large volumes of information simply to reconstruct a patient’s history.

And, as ONC’s national data demonstrates, some patients continue to report repeating tests or procedures because previous results were unavailable.

The fundamental problem is not always that the information does not exist.

It is whether relevant information can be brought together and made useful when the provider needs it.

What If the Medical History Followed the Patient?

Instead of expecting every provider—or every patient—to reconstruct the medical record independently, consider a different model.

Relevant records are retrieved from sources across the healthcare ecosystem.

The information is reconciled and organized.

Duplicate information is addressed.

The clinically meaningful history is summarized.

The underlying information remains traceable to its sources.

And the resulting longitudinal history is delivered into the provider’s existing workflow.

The objective is not simply to obtain more data.

The objective is to turn fragmented healthcare information into a usable picture of the patient.

That capability exists today.

How MedSync Is Addressing the Problem

CG Moneta Consulting has partnered with MedSync to bring its medical-record aggregation and clinical review capabilities to healthcare providers.

MedSync retrieves patient information from more than 2,500 data sources nationwide, including EHRs, health information exchanges, hospitals, laboratories, imaging centers, pharmacies, payers, specialists, and other sources.

But retrieving records is only the beginning.

MedSync’s process includes several important steps:

1. Retrieve: Records are gathered from available sources across the healthcare ecosystem.
2. Reconcile: Information is normalized, de-duplicated, identity-matched, and placed on a timeline.
3. Summarize: MedSync’s clinical team develops an H&P-style RECAP — Reviewed Evidence Comprehensive Assessment Profile.
4. Quality Check: The RECAP undergoes a multi-step quality process with clinical oversight.
5. Deliver: The completed RECAP is delivered into the healthcare organization’s preferred destination and existing workflow.

Instead of simply providing another collection of records for a physician or clinical team to sort through, RECAP is designed to consolidate information into a comprehensive patient history that can be efficiently reviewed.

For patients with multiple conditions, providers, and healthcare touchpoints, the goal is to provide greater clarity before decisions are made.

From Medical Record Retrieval to Clinically Useful Information

This distinction is important.

Healthcare organizations do not necessarily need another repository containing hundreds or thousands of pages of medical records.

They need information that can be used.

MedSync’s model addresses both sides of that challenge: finding the available information and making it more clinically useful.

Records from multiple sources are consolidated into a longitudinal history rather than remaining isolated within the organizations that generated them.

The resulting RECAP is then delivered where the healthcare team already works, reducing the need to introduce another disconnected portal into the clinical workflow.

For healthcare providers, this creates an opportunity to approach medical-record retrieval differently.

Instead of asking:

“Where are the patient’s records?”

the more important question becomes:

“Do we have the relevant information necessary to understand this patient’s healthcare journey?”

A Foundation for More Connected Care

Medical-record aggregation can also provide a foundation for broader care coordination.

When a healthcare organization has greater visibility into a patient’s history across multiple providers and care settings, its clinical team may be better positioned to identify information requiring additional review and coordinate appropriate follow-up.

The longitudinal record therefore does not have to represent the end of the process.

It can become the foundation for a more connected approach to understanding and coordinating the patient’s care.

This is particularly relevant for complex and high-risk patients whose healthcare journeys may involve numerous physicians, specialists, facilities, medications, procedures, and transitions of care.

The more complicated the healthcare journey becomes, the more valuable it can be to see that journey as one connected history rather than a collection of isolated encounters.

Patients Shouldn’t Have to Carry the Healthcare System on Their Shoulders

Patients should have access to their medical information.

They should understand their health, participate in decisions, and have the ability to share their information with the people and organizations involved in their care.

But that is very different from requiring patients to function as the primary mechanism for transferring their medical history from one healthcare organization to another.

Healthcare interoperability continues to advance. TEFCA and other initiatives are creating infrastructure intended to allow health information to move more securely and effectively across organizational boundaries.

The next challenge is ensuring that available information becomes accessible, consolidated, clinically useful, and integrated into the workflows where healthcare decisions are actually made.

Healthcare organizations can increasingly move away from asking:

“Can the patient get us those records?”

and toward asking:

“How can we make sure our providers have the relevant patient history when they need it?”

That represents a fundamentally different way of thinking about health information—one centered not on the organization where the data happens to reside, but on the patient whose healthcare journey that data represents.

The Patient Is One Person. Their Medical History Should Tell One Story.

A patient’s healthcare journey may cross multiple physicians, specialists, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, imaging centers, and health systems.

Their medical history should not have to start over each time it does.

At CG Moneta Consulting, we believe healthcare innovation should reduce friction for healthcare providers and the patients they serve. Our partnership with MedSync provides healthcare organizations with an opportunity to bring fragmented patient information together, make it more clinically useful, and deliver it into the workflows where care decisions are made.

The patient is one person. Their medical history should tell one connected story.

Learn More

CG Moneta Consulting is working with healthcare organizations interested in evaluating MedSync’s medical-record aggregation and RECAP capabilities.

To learn more or discuss how MedSync could support your organization, contact CG Moneta Consulting.

Sources

Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Gaps in Individuals’ Information Exchange. Health IT Quick Stat #56. ONC reports persistent information-exchange gaps, including patients bringing prior test results to appointments and repeating tests or procedures when previous results were unavailable.

Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). Information regarding the federal framework supporting secure nationwide electronic health information exchange.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights. Individuals’ Right under HIPAA to Access their Health Information. Guidance regarding individuals’ rights to access protected health information contained in designated record sets.

MedSync Corp. RECAP — Reviewed Evidence Comprehensive Assessment Profile. Information regarding MedSync’s medical-record retrieval, reconciliation, summarization, quality-review, and delivery process.