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When requesting medical records, what type of records are specifically needed? I requested ALL records for a client, and received over 500 pages from the hospital. In the future, can I make a more specific request for efficiency purposes?

Question:

When requesting medical records, what type of records are specifically needed? I requested ALL records for a client, and received over 500 pages from the hospital. In the future, can I make a more specific request for efficiency purposes?

Answer:

  • Great question! While we do typically advise to collect all records, 500 pages is understandably a lot! Not all applicants will have this many, but if you are seeing that certain hospitals/providers tend to send significant amounts (particularly if they aren't helpful for the application), you could ask for: Inpatient hospitalization records, discharge summaries, outpatient/emergency records, and psychiatric examinations/mental status exams. Those are all pretty key for the application. When you submit the records to DDS, I'd recommend adding a note that these were all that you requested, so that it doesn't look like you just weren't sending everything you have.