How to get medical records from an Indian hospital when you live abroad

You can request a parent's medical records from most Indian hospitals without being physically present, as long as the patient (or someone with documented authority) authorises the request in writing. The process varies by hospital, but it almost always runs through a Medical Records Department (sometimes called MRD) rather than the treating doctor directly — that's the detail most people miss first.

Who can actually ask

Indian hospitals release records to the patient, or to someone the patient has authorised — usually in writing, sometimes with an ID copy attached. As their child abroad, you generally can't call and request your parent's file yourself with no paper trail behind you, even in an emergency. The two things worth having ready before you need them:

• A written authorisation from your parent naming you and permitting the hospital to share records with you — a simple signed letter is often enough; some hospitals have their own form.
• A copy of your parent's ID and yours, since most hospitals want to confirm both the patient's identity and the requester's relationship to them.

If your parent is not able to authorise this themselves — due to a medical emergency or incapacity — the hospital will usually ask for whoever is legally the next of kin or holds documented medical decision-making authority, so it's worth having that sorted out before it's urgently needed, not during a crisis.

The actual steps

1. Find the hospital's Medical Records Department, not the doctor's office. Most hospitals of any size — Apollo, Fortis, Manipal, and the large government and trust hospitals alike — have a dedicated MRD that handles record requests. A quick call to the hospital's general reception asking for "MRD" or "the medical records office" gets you there faster than trying to reach the doctor who treated your parent.
2. Ask specifically what they need from you. Requirements differ enough between hospitals that it's worth asking directly rather than assuming: some accept a scanned authorisation emailed in, some want it couriered, a few still require an in-person request from a family member in India.
3. Specify exactly what you want. "The discharge summary and all reports from the March admission" gets a faster, more complete response than "his file." If you're not sure what exists, ask for the discharge summary first — it usually references every test and report from that admission, which tells you what else to request.
4. Ask how it will be delivered. Many hospitals will now email a PDF directly; some still default to a physical copy handed to whoever is present in India. If nobody is there to collect it, say so up front and ask for the digital option explicitly.
5. Follow up in writing, not just by phone. Hospital records departments are often understaffed relative to demand; an email you can reference and resend tends to move faster than a call that gets forgotten by the next shift.

What tends to go wrong

• The request gets treated as "for the doctor," not "for the family." Being explicit that you're the patient's child, requesting for your own records, avoids the request getting stuck waiting for a doctor's office to have time.
• Old records from a different hospital or lab aren't included. A discharge summary usually only covers that admission. If your parent has been seen at multiple hospitals over the years, each one needs its own request — there's no single national record store that pulls them together automatically.
• Nobody in the family knows what's already been requested. More than one sibling calling the same MRD asking for the same file, at different times, is common and slows everyone down. Whoever handles logistics should keep a simple note of what's been requested and from where.

Once you actually have the records

The harder part is often not getting the records — it's what happens to them afterward. A discharge summary emailed as a PDF, sitting in an inbox, doesn't do much for the next doctor who needs to know what happened four years ago in another city. Getting it out of that inbox and onto something anyone in the family can find later is the natural next step, and it's the exact gap reading a parent's lab report from far away touches on from the other direction — reports that arrive fine but never get organised into anything usable.

Once you have the records, Apta is where they live from then on — forwarded once, readable from anywhere, without needing to remember which hospital's MRD to call the next time someone asks for that same discharge summary.

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This is general guidance, not legal advice. Requirements for medical record access vary by hospital and by state, and the specifics can change. Confirm the exact process with the hospital's own records department before relying on any of the above.