Your records are in five patient portals. Here’s how to get them in one place.
A login for the hospital, one for the lab, one for your GP, one for the dermatologist. Each holds a piece of your history, and none of them shows the whole.
Priya is 41. She has five patient portal logins: her GP’s practice, the hospital where she had a minor operation, the lab chain that does her blood tests, a dermatology clinic, and the clinic she used before she moved across town. She can name three of the passwords.
Last month a new doctor asked when her thyroid was last checked and what the result was. The answer existed. It was in one of the five portals, but she wasn’t sure which, and she couldn’t log in to the old clinic from her phone in the waiting room.
Why portals don’t solve the problem
- Each portal shows one provider. Your hospital portal doesn’t show your GP’s results, and the reverse.
- Portals show recent items. Older results and letters are often harder to find, or only available on request.
- Logins expire. When you change providers or move, an old portal account can be closed or forgotten.
- The same test looks different in each. Different names, units and reference ranges make results hard to compare across portals.
How to bring everything together
1. List every portal you have
Write down every provider you’ve seen in the last five to ten years and whether they have a portal. Store the logins in a password manager, so they aren’t lost the next time you need them.
2. Download everything as PDFs
Go through each portal once and download lab reports, letters, visit summaries and imaging reports. Many portals have a “download” or “share” option for each result. Where a portal only shows part of the record, ask the records office for a full copy. In the US, HIPAA gives you the right to it (HHS: your right to access).
3. Rename every file the same way
Date · Provider · What it is
2024-02-11 · City Lab · Thyroid panel
2025-06-30 · Riverside Hospital · Discharge summary
2026-01-15 · Dr Lee · Dermatology letter
Starting with the date sorts the folder into a timeline automatically.
4. Keep one copy outside every portal
Save the folder somewhere you control: your phone, your computer, or both. If a portal closes, you still have the records.
5. Add new results the day they arrive
When a portal emails you that a new result is ready, download it that day. One minute now saves a long search later.
| Portal | What Priya found | Last result |
|---|---|---|
| GP practice | Visit notes, vaccinations | Sep 2026 |
| City Lab | Thyroid panel, blood count | Feb 2024 |
| Riverside Hospital | Operation and discharge summary | Jun 2025 |
| Dermatology clinic | Clinic letters | Jan 2026 |
| Old clinic | Older blood tests (records office request) | Aug 2021 |
How Backstory does this for you
Backstory gives those PDFs one home. Upload what you download from each portal, or photograph paper reports, and Backstory reads the tests, values, dates and ranges and puts everything on one timeline, in date order, with units matched and each result linked to its original page. You can also import Apple Health.
The next time a doctor asks “when was your thyroid last checked?”, Priya opens one timeline instead of five portals, and taps through to the report.
Keep reading
- Moving doctors or countries? How to bring your medical history with you
- Every lab result said “normal”. Together they told a different story.
- Backstory Health FAQ: how the app works, privacy and pricing
This article is about organizing records, and the people in it are fictional examples. It isn’t medical advice. Talk to your doctor or clinic about your results and treatment.