Here’s a situation that comes up for many people: you move in later life.
Or maybe it’s your older mother — or father, or other older relative — who’s moving to a new town, perhaps to be closer to you, or otherwise be somewhere more conducive to aging in place.
Such a move means that you’ll need to establish care with a new primary care provider.
For most older adults, establishing a good working relationship with a new health provider is a challenge. If nothing else, it can take some time to feel that each party knows and understands the other.
But it’s also in many cases a terrific opportunity to review a person’s health and healthcare. Provided, of course, that everyone involved makes an effort, and has good information to work with.
In this post, I’ll share my list of the most useful medical records and health information that you should bring to that first visit with the new primary care provider.
Do you have to bring this information? Of course not. In my own experience, most people bring nothing more than a medication list, if that. And they leave it to the new doctors to request health information from the previous doctors, which often arrives well after that first new patient visit.
But this is a problem, because it makes it quite difficult for that first visit to be truly useful.
Sure, the doctor can interview you, and do a physical exam. Yet for many older adults, that interview and exam is often much more productive if a doctor can combine it with a review of the most useful health information.
I myself used to see a fair number of new older patients, when I was a primary care geriatrician at the Over 60 Health Center. Those first visits often felt like fumbling around in a dark room, feeling the walls and furniture and trying to get a sense of the overall layout.
But occasionally, a new patient would come with useful health information in hand. This generally made a big difference in how quickly we could ensure that our new patient was getting the right medical care from us, and from other involved doctors.
So if you want to have the best start possible with a new doctor — or help your aging parent do so — you’ll need to do a little advance preparation. This often requires some time and energy. But it will pay off, by ensuring that the new doctor has the information he or she needs, to provide you with good healthcare.
Also, if you are in that season of life where you’re starting to be more involved with your aging parent’s health (or think perhaps you should be), this is a great opportunity to learn more about your parent’s health.
10 Useful Types of Medical Information to Bring to a New Primary Care Provider
Here’s my list of what I ask patients and families to bring to me, in order to make that new patient visit most useful.
This list is especially suited to the primary care of aging adults with chronic medical problems. But most of this information can come in handy for first visits with specialists. It can also be very useful to clinicians in the emergency room, or at urgent care.
Note: If you or your loved one have been maintaining a personal health record, this is the type of information that I hope you’ve been keeping in your personal health record!
1. List of chronic health conditions.
This would include any conditions that you currently see a doctor for, or is being monitored. Bonus points if you include the year the condition was first diagnosed, or any other major milestones related to the disease. You can also include major past problems which are no longer being actively treated.
Now, electronic medical records and patient portals often generate a list of conditions automatically. But these tend to be long, unwieldy, and cluttered with diagnoses that may or may not be still relevant. So be sure to keep a list based on what your previous PCP had been focused on.
2. Medication list.
Be sure to list all prescribed medications, along with any over-the-counter medications and dietary supplements. Also helpful:
- Highlight any new or recently started medications;
- List any recently stopped medications (e.g. from the past 6 months);
- List any medications you believe have been problematic in the past.
3. Laboratory results.
Most commonly these are results from blood tests and urine tests. Any lab results from the past 1-2 years will be helpful. You can learn about the tests that are ordered often in older adults here: Understanding Laboratory Tests: 10 Commonly Used Blood Tests for Older Adults.
- Specific tests that are likely to be useful include:
- Complete blood count (CBC)
- Electrolyte panel, which usually includes sodium, potassium, chloride, CO2
- Renal panel, which usually includes creatinine and blood urea nitrogen (BUN)
- Thyroid function tests, such as thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and/or free thyroxine (FT4)
- Urine analysis
- Do bring any lab results you have. It is useful to see what other doctors have ordered and checked.
- Do bring results from different dates if at all possible. Lab results are much more useful when a trend or context can be evaluated. In many cases, comparing the latest results to previous results is extremely useful.
4. Radiology and imaging results.
This includes x-ray reports, ultrasound reports, CT scans, MRIs, etc. Radiology medical records from the last 1-5 years are especially useful.
5. Other medical diagnostic reports.
These might include pulmonary function tests, EKGs, cardiac catheterization reports, biopsy results, neuropsychology evaluations, and so forth. It’s especially useful to have medical reports that are related to the diagnosis or management of a current chronic condition.
6. Hospital and emergency department reports.
Try to get a copy of the narrative reports that clinicians create when a person comes the emergency room, or is hospitalized. These medical records are the reports that are written by health providers, for other health providers. Note: these are not same reports as the patient discharge instructions that are always handed out.
You may have to file a medical records request to obtain the medical records that are most useful. You do have a right to obtain your own records upon written request, or your power of attorney for healthcare can do so, as I explain in this article about HIPAA. However, some agreeable clinicians will just print them out in the office for you, if they have online access to them.
Specific examples of useful reports include:
- Emergency room clinical note. This is the note dictated (or typed) by the emergency room doctor who managed your loved one’s visit.
- Hospital Admission History & Physical. This is the note dictated by the admitting doctor, when a person is initially admitted to the hospital.
- Hospital Discharge Summary. This is the note dictated by a discharging clinician, when a person is discharged to home or rehabilitation. It usually summarizes the patient’s hospital course.
7. List of involved clinicians.
List the doctors and healthcare providers who were previously involved in your loved one’s care. I often learn about important problems by finding out just why a person was seeing a given specialist.
For each specialist, it’s helpful to know when you established care, and how often you’d been seeing each provider. Your list might include:
- Primary care provider
- Medical specialists, such as cardiologists, pulmonologists, urologists, neurologists, etc.
- Behavioral medicine clinicians, such as psychologists, counselors, and therapists
- Skilled nursing facility doctors, if relevant (for instance, if your aging parent is currently at the facility, or recently was discharged)
- Other skilled medical therapists, such as for physical, occupational, or speech therapy
- Any other health professional who is significantly involved in you or your parent’s care
8. Clinical visit notes.
Visit notes written by the primary care doctor, and the medical specialists, can be useful. At a minimum, try to get a copy of the last note.
I recommend starting by requesting notes from the last 3 visits, or the last year. If it’s easy to get more notes from each provider, you can do so as well.
If your previous doctors had a patient portal, check to see if the complete visit notes are available there, as some major health systems have begun making clinical visit notes available in this way.
Again, HIPAA gives patients (and their legally designated surrogates) the right to obtain their medical records upon request.
9. List of other providers of supportive or eldercare services.
Have you or your loved one been getting help from a care manager? In-home aides? A patient navigator? A good primary care provider should be interested in knowing who has been involved, and what kind of help they’ve been providing. (Learn more about eldercare options here: Providing Elder Care: Covering the Cost of Home Care, Assisted Living & Other Options.)
10. Advance care planning documents.
These include any durable power of attorney documents, advance directives, living wills, pre-hospital DNRs, and/or POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) forms.
How a Personal Health Record Can Help
Long list, eh? Well, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that so far, I’ve had very few patients arrive with most of this information.
But this is the medical information that we doctors should know, in order to provide you or your aging parent with good care.
The ideal process, of course, is to collect medical information into some kind of personal health record system as you go along, so that you have all the information handy if you ever need to switch doctors. If you currently have a patient portal, that’s great but usually it only holds information from one particular practice, and you might lose access if you leave the practice. For this reason, it’s good to keep your own copy of your medical records, separate from the online patient portals.
So for instance, every time you or your loved one gets a blood draw, you would ask to get a copy of the results (or download them from your patient portal), and then you would file these results in your paper or digital personal health record. (For more on how to maintain a personal health record, see this post.)
But if you haven’t been maintaining a personal health record, a switch to a new primary care provider is the perfect time to start one.
So if you have the time, energy, and interest in being proactive, gather up these medical records and bring them to that new patient visit. Your new provider will thank you, and you or your older loved one should be able to get better healthcare.
This article was reviewed and updated by Dr. Kernisan in January 2024.
Lavi Mare says
Although you really didn’t explain its importance, I appreciate it when you mentioned bringing a list of the previous healthcare providers when the person takes a loved one to the hospital. My brother has been seen and checked by a few doctors back then, so I might as well take the records with me. Sure he only needs urgent care, but we can’t be too certain that these things won’t be needed.
Joy Butler says
Hi Dr. Leslie, I’m grateful for your advice about keeping our health records. My cousin exactly has the same concern when he moved into his new location. He’s been looking for a new doctor, however, he can’t find all his records on hand. I guess I need to forward this information to him so he’ll be guided, thanks.
Taylor Bishop says
Thanks for explaining what kind of medical information could be good to tell your new doctor. It’s good to know that you should bring them a list of medications that are prescribed to you and over-the-counter ones. You also said that you should give medications that were problematic in the past. It sounds beneficial to continue to add to a record of sorts so that you can refer to it later and help better inform the doctor of what didn’t work. It seems like a good way for them to understand your situation more.
Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH says
Yes, I absolutely recommend keeping your own health record, so that you can provide a new doctor with information about your past medical history.
Doris Waggoner says
My parents are gone, and my sister handled my parents’ medical care, so in a way this doesn’t apply to me. I’m more than happy with my PCP, and in my early 70s. I live in a CCRC retirement home so I’m not planning to move. I like her very much, and she’s not near retirement. Still, your list is wonderful, and I think it still applies to people my age who are concerned about our own health, and that of family in our own generation. One thing I’d add is to compile a medical history of your family. For instance, breast cancer runs in my maternal family, so my doctor needs to know that. Even more, my sister, knowing that, gets mammograms every six months, and has had multiple lumps (benign, thankfully) removed. I was just diagnosed with osteoporosis, which shouldn’t have surprised me, as my mother and hers both had it. Knowing that, I can work on treating it. I also had ulcerative colitis, ultimately requiring a complete colectemy. I’ve since learned that IBD runs in my father’s family, though not so closely as the breast cancer does. A 3rd cousin whose hobby is medical research examined our mutual great great grandfather’s 1884 death certificate carefully and concluded he had IBD as well, and one of my first cousins on that side, at least, has it. My sister and our half sister on our father’s side have needed their thyroid removed, though both were benign. In all these cases, my PCP is grateful for the extra information, and does extra testing, or ignores it, based on the information I give her. The 4 siblings all have low blood pressure, even those who are overweight, and very low “normal” temperatures. That means we have to remind doctors when our temperatures are around 99,6, and we feel feverish, that we probably do have a fever.
I’ve been on lots of meds since my colon was removed. Once I was taken to the ER with heart symptoms and couldn’t list my meds, while they waited to get me in for an EKG. I was fine, but went home and created that list. Nobody’s ever asked for the bottles, but I pull out the list at every visit. Since most of my doctors are part of the same network, they can pull up their copy and we just check that it’s current. Very handy.
I will definitely complete the rest of your list for myself, and encourage my siblings and cousins to do the same. Sorry that this is so long. I’m basically affirming what you’re doing, for whatever generation, even your kids if they live at home.
Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH says
Thank you for sharing your story, and glad you found this list helpful.
I didn’t include family history on the list because as people get older (e.g. aged 75 and older), it becomes less useful. Almost every significant health problem becomes more common or quite common with age, and by late-life, an older person’s lifestyle and chronic health conditions and apparent state of health are better predictors of what to worry about than what their family history is.
I do ask patients in person about their parents’ health and what they died of, but that’s more because I like to learn about them as a person and also it can provide insight into what a person might worry about regarding their own health.
All that said, it’s certainly not a bad idea to bring in one’s family history, and to be informed about it. Thank you once again for your comment and best wishes maintaining your health!
Cameron Bennett says
I like that you mention bringing a list of medication that you are currently taking or have recently stopped taking. Even if you’re not taking that medication anymore, it’s important that your new doctor knows so they can adjust accordingly. I just moved to a new city, so I’m now looking for a new doctor. This was a helpful post in things that I should remember when I do find someone.
Alexandria Martinez says
A couple weeks ago, my fiance and I moved into a new neighborhood and home. We are looking for a new medical center near us so that we will be prepared in the future if we need one. When we go to our new doctor we will be sure to take your advice and let them know any hospital or emergency department reports we have.
Hannah Schroeder says
This article was really helpful, especially the part about bringing a list of medications that you take or have stopped taking within the last 6 months. I’ve recently moved to the city, and I want to find a doctor I can go to if I end up staying here for a while. I’m on a few drugs, so maybe I should spend time making a list before I make an appointment.
Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH says
Yes, it’s very important to bring a complete medication list. It’s even better to bring in all the medication bottles.
Zequek Estrada says
Leslie, people who go out on their own for the first time should be made aware of this list. I remember, years ago moving out and going to a medical centre on my own for the first time. I couldn’t fill out all the questions on the papers they have you fill out. I’ve also had friends who have had a similar experience. Luckily, each of us had our phones to call and ask our parents for help.
Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH says
Yes, it helps to be prepared. Probably we should be teaching everyone when they are young to keep a record of their health, along with keeping a record of finances and other important life records. But this is especially important for older adults.
roni says
I have started to prepare for the next step in my Mother’s living situation, if her health and ability to be independent require a move. I recently began to consider the change in pcp and insurance providers if she moves to a different county, closer to me. Thank you for this information. I have shared your site on Facebook with friends my age.
Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH says
Glad you’re helping your mother plan ahead. Even if she doesn’t change PCPs, keeping copies of her key health information can help your family. Thank you for the comment, and for spreading the word about the site.
Gerald Roux says
Thank you so much for the very informative site. You are filling a need.
Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH says
You’re very welcome! I’m so glad you are finding the information helpful and very much appreciate your taking the time to comment.
Julie morris says
Great, comprehensive advice.
And the responses to the comments and questions asked, is equally as valuable.
Understanding the factors in an assessment and care approach, is so helpful.
Nicole Didyk, MD says
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Julie! I’m so glad that you find the article helpful.