When you were being treated for cancer, visiting your doctor weekly (sometimes even more often than that) was a routine part of your life. Now that you’re cancer-free, you may still need to visit your doctor more frequently than other people who have never had a serious illness. Every time you leave the doctor’s office, you leave with paperwork. You may wonder what you need to keep, why and for how long. Let’s take a closer look at the documents that comprise your personal health records now that your living life after cancer.
Cancer Treatment Summary: A Cancer Survivor’s Most Important Health Record
A treatment summary is a document completed when you meet with a survivorship provider after your cancer treatment ended. It describes all of the cancer treatment you received, including surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, etc. This summary will list your exact cancer diagnosis and when you received it, what stage your cancer was, and any other relevant information that came from your pathology report.
Your treatment summary will include all pertinent information that could affect your health in the future, such as how many lymph nodes tested positive for cancer, the cell type of your tumor, your cancer’s estrogen-receptor status, etc.
Your cancer treatment summary is very important!
It will be shared with your primary care physician, and any other doctors you see in the future. The treatment summary ensures that you have easy access to your pertinent medical records when you need them. Without it, you would have to track down individual records yourself, which might be difficult or even impossible.
It’s possible that some of the information on the sheet includes medical terms that you may not understand, but that’s OK. It can provide great insight for a physician in the future who may need to provide care for cancer or for another condition.
Other Important Medical Records to Keep
Other important medical records to hold onto include:
- Treatment plans for existing health conditions
- Records of past appointments (noting which doctor you saw on which date)
- Immunization records
- Hospital bills
- Mammogram reports and other imaging tests
- Records detailing other past major illnesses
- Current medications and medication histories (including information about allergies or adverse reactions to medications)
It’s critical to keep copies of your important medical records because physicians are only required to keep them for a limited period of time (which varies from state to state.) Even when patients need records their doctors do still have, they face significant fees and challenges accessing them, notes a 2018 report to Congress by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Keeping Track of Your Health Records
While most healthcare providers keep electronic medical records (EMRs) on each of their patients, it’s smart to keep track of your own records, too, rather than rely on your providers to do so. EMRs are only as comprehensive and accurate as the data that someone is entering into them. Providers are not perfect. They’re often in a rush. It’s entirely possible that pertinent information can inadvertently be left out.
If you go online, you’ll find many apps available to help you organize your medical records. Whether you want to keep track digitally using your Android or iPhone smartphone, personal computer, or tablet, you’ll find many options from which to choose. This article mentions 10 apps you can look into for starters. The technology definitely exists. Why not use it?
We all know that computers crash and phones get stolen. You definitely can’t go wrong when you go old school. If you haven’t already, request paper copies of all of your important health records (especially records related to your cancer treatment.) Laminate the pages or place them in plastic sleeves to protect them, punch holes in them, secure them in a binder, keep the binder in a safe and easily accessible place, and bring the binder with you each time you’re meeting with a new medical provider.