How Long Do Doctors Keep Your Medical Records? The Surprising Truth

At Health Bank™ One, we’re proud to have a 100% success rate in retrieving existing medical records. But what happens when records no longer exist? It’s easy to assume that your records are always available. After all, your doctor had the records and we trust them to be kept safe, right? Unfortunately, the reality is more complicated. Doctors retire, practices close, hospitals switch record-keeping systems, leaving your records at risk. 

While there is a federal baseline for administrative record retention set by HIPAA, there is no law defining how long medical records must be retained. Medical record retention laws vary by state with significantly different timeframes. In Illinois, records must be retained for a minimum of 10 years whereas Florida physicians only need to maintain records for 5 years following the last patient contact.  

Medical Record Retention Laws by State

If a doctor retires or relocates, they are required to give notice to their patients and provide instructions regarding access to records. Once notice has been given, it is the responsibility of the patient to find the custodian of the records and collect those records before they are destroyed.  

In the last 10 years many providers have updated their Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, but unfortunately many failed to adequately retain records from before the transition despite their legal requirement to do so. Because of this, patient records may be lost despite being within the retention timeframe as mandated by your state. To avoid losing your records it is important to request your records after each appointment, and Health Bank One is here to make this process easy and seamless.  

Our Support Team works hard to track down records nationwide every day. We have seen countless cases of records wrongly lost or buried deep in archive systems that take over a month to be retrieved. One month is too long to wait for your records when it matters most, and that is if the records haven't been destroyed. Health Bank One allows patients to take charge of their records so that there are no more surprises, no records lost, all in our intuitive and organized app.