Saving your own medical records

[Guest guest]

Hi,

Saving your own medical records is especially important if you are going to move

to a different area and need to get new doctors. If you got o a new doc, and

they do not have a full set of your records (the doctor's office applying for

these records is a very slow, and usually incomplete process) you will not only

have wasted a visit, but likely given an impression of someone who is not really

sick.

In most jurisdictions, your medical records are actually your property. The

doctor is a custodian. They are required to give you your records, although they

can charge a fee for copying them for you.

One other advantage is that you can organize these records and look for

correlations. I built an Excel spreadsheet of mine, although the less usual

tests I have taken out of sequence and into another file. But this way you can

look for patterns in, for instance, your red cell concentration in relation to

(for instance) immune response or viral titers. These would likely be ordered by

different doctors at different times, so you may be the first one looking at

this type of relationship.

...

I just want to remind people that, at least in some

countries, medical records are disposed of at times.

In any event, it's important to get hard copies and save

our medical records ! They might be needed in future,

for proof of having ME now.

....

Jerry