Getting Your Treatment Records and Reports — Who Holds Them, and How to Ask

No single office holds all of them. The hospital holds the case sheet, the day-care notes and the discharge summaries. The pathology laboratory holds the slides and the paraffin block. The imaging centre holds the scans. The pharmacy holds the itemised bills. The insurer holds the claim file. Each one has to be asked separately.

This is the part families discover late, usually on the day it matters. A relative rings the hospital for “all the reports”, receives a discharge summary, and assumes the file is complete. It is not. The two documents a second opinion actually turns on — the histopathology report and the biomarker report — are generated by a laboratory that may not even sit in the same building. Knowing the map before you start is what turns a three-week chase into a three-day one, and it is what makes a second opinion, an insurance claim and the next doctor’s first hour possible.

In writing, addressed to the medical records department, not verbally at a counter. Name the patient, the registration number and the dates. List each document on its own line. Sign it, attach an identity proof, keep a date-stamped acknowledgement, and ask for soft copies by email.

1. 1

   Write one request instead of making six phone calls

   Address it to the medical records department. Give the patient’s name, registration number, the treating consultant and the treatment dates. Then list each document you want, line by line.

2. 2

   Attach identity proof, and an authority letter if someone else is collecting

   The patient’s identity proof. If someone else is collecting, add a signed letter naming that person, with their identity proof. Ask whether a scan is accepted before anyone books travel.

3. 3

   Get the request acknowledged, with a date on it

   A stamped copy, or an email reply. The 72-hour timeline in the ethics regulations runs from a request that can be shown to exist, so a verbal request at a counter is worth very little if you later need to follow it up.

4. 4

   Ask for PDFs, and for imaging in DICOM

   Soft copies travel and survive; paper does neither. For scans, ask for a DICOM disc or a download link rather than film. That is what another radiologist can open and re-read.

5. 5

   Ask the laboratory separately about the block and slides

   The laboratory is a different custodian to the hospital file. Ask for the block and slide numbers, whether they are still retained, and the procedure for borrowing them for review. Retention periods vary by laboratory, so ask rather than assume.

6. 6

   If nothing arrives, escalate calmly and on paper

   Write to the medical superintendent, then the grievance officer, quoting your acknowledged request and its date. Most delays are administrative rather than deliberate.

If the reason you need the file is that treatment is moving somewhere else, request it before the last cycle at the current centre rather than after — the handover checklist is set out in Transferring Immunotherapy Treatment to Another Centre.

Anything that cannot be regenerated. The histopathology report and the block and slide numbers. Every biomarker report. Imaging on disc, with its dated report. A one-page treatment summary naming drug, dose and cycle dates. And a record of any immune-related side effect and the steroid course that followed.

• The histopathology report, and where the block is. A second opinion is re-read from the block, not from the report. Keep the laboratory’s name, the specimen number and the block and slide references with the report itself.
• Every biomarker report. PD-L1, MSI or MMR, TMB, and any panel that was run. These decide whether immunotherapy is an option at all, and repeating them needs tissue you may no longer have.
• Imaging on disc, kept with its report. Films fade, curl and get lost in cupboards. A DICOM disc or a download copy, filed with the dated report, is what lets the next radiologist compare rather than start again.
• A one-page treatment summary. Drug name, dose, first cycle date, most recent cycle date, cycles completed and the plan. What goes on it line by line is set out in Your Immunotherapy Treatment Card.
• A dated record of every immune-related side effect. What happened, when, what was given, and whether the drug was held or stopped. For any doctor who sees you later, this is the most useful page in the file.
• Discharge and day-care summaries, in date order. Kept in sequence rather than in a pile. The order is what shows the story of the treatment, and it is the first thing a reviewing doctor reconstructs.
• Dated, itemised bills. For claims, for tax and for the audit trail. Costs are indicative and change over time, so the dated original is the only version worth keeping.

Yes, with one signed authority letter. The patient signs a letter naming the relative, attaches both identity proofs, and the records department releases copies to that person. Ask whether a scanned copy is accepted or a notarised one is wanted before anyone books a flight.

• One authority letter, not a phone call. A records department cannot release a file to a caller whose identity it cannot verify, and should not. A signed letter naming the relative, with both identity proofs attached, is what actually unlocks it.
• Ask about notarisation in the first email. Some departments accept a scanned letter; others want it notarised. Getting that answer early is what decides whether anyone has to travel at all.
• Ask for soft copies in the same breath. PDFs cross time zones; paper does not. Request reports as PDFs and imaging as a download link or a DICOM disc that can be couriered.
• Name one point of contact in India. Two relatives asking the same department slightly different questions slows everything down. One name, one number, one email thread, and everything lands in one place.
• Budget time rather than money. Copying and disc charges are usually small and are indicative, as of August 2026. It is the office-hours delay, not the fee, that people underestimate.

If what is being weighed is treatment outside India, the record set is the first thing any overseas centre asks for — and it is worth reading Should You Go Abroad for Immunotherapy? before assembling anything, because it sets out what is genuinely different abroad and what is not.

Six documents. The histopathology report. The biomarker report. The most recent imaging with its report. The latest blood results. A treatment summary with drug, dose and cycle dates. And the current prescription. Without the first two, an opinion is largely guesswork.

The order matters as much as the list. Families often send a discharge summary first because it is the easiest document to lay hands on, and it is the least informative of the six. A discharge summary says what was done. The pathology and biomarker reports say what the disease is and whether immunotherapy is a rational option for it at all. If you can only get two documents before a consultation, get those two.

A written review can be done on soft copies, which is why chasing PDFs rather than paper is worth the extra sentence in your email. How a remote review works, what it can settle and what it cannot, is set out in Online and Remote Second Opinions for Immunotherapy. Asking for a second opinion is a normal part of cancer care and does not oblige you to change centre.

A claim is decided on paperwork, not on how ill the patient was. Insurers ask for the claim form, the discharge or day-care summary, the itemised final bill, pharmacy bills with batch numbers, the investigation reports and the prescription. A missing itemised bill is the most common reason a reimbursement stalls.

• Itemised, not consolidated. A single line reading “pharmacy” on a final bill is the reason claims come back with a query. Ask the billing counter for the break-up at the time, while the file is still open.
• Get every position in writing, and dated. Whether a scheme covers a given drug, and at what ceiling, changes over time. A verbal assurance at a desk cannot be produced later; a dated letter can.
• Keep pre-authorisation and rejection letters together. If a cashless request is declined and you pay and claim reimbursement instead, the decline letter is part of the evidence, not a piece of bad news to be thrown away.
• Scheme paperwork sits alongside, not instead. Aarogyasri, CGHS, ECHS and ESI each have their own referral, empanelment and approval documents. Keep them in the same file as the clinical records so nothing has to be reconstructed under time pressure. Any ceilings and costs discussed are indicative, as of August 2026.
• Imaging bills may come from elsewhere. Response-assessment PET-CT is coordinated at partner imaging centres rather than owned by CION, so those reports and those bills reach you from the imaging centre directly and need to be collected from them.

Immunotherapy is given at CION as day care, so the centre holds the infusion notes, the drug and dose record and the cycle dates. Imaging comes from partner imaging centres. Pathology comes from the laboratory that processed the specimen. CAR-T and cell-therapy records come from the centre that delivered them.

• Day-care records sit with the centre treating you. Infusion notes, pre-cycle blood results, the drug and dose given, the cycle dates, any cycle that was held and why, and the consent forms. Ask for a written treatment summary at any cycle rather than waiting until treatment ends.
• Response-assessment PET-CT is coordinated at partner imaging centres. Those centres are not owned by CION, so the images, the report and the bill come from them directly. Keep their reference number with your file.
• The block belongs to the laboratory that made it. If the biopsy was done elsewhere, so was the block, and that is where a review has to be requested from.
• CION does not provide CAR-T or cell therapy. We do not administer or stock CAR-T product. If you have had, or are considering, one of those treatments, the records and the follow-up plan come from the accredited centre that delivers it; our role is orientation and onward referral.
• This page ranks nobody. No hospital or laboratory is named or compared here. The requests set out above are meant to work at whichever centre is treating you, including one that is not us.

Records are a means, not an end. They exist so a decision can be made properly — a review of the current plan, a move to a centre nearer home, or a considered answer to whether treatment abroad is worth it. These pages pick up where the paperwork stops.

• Transferring Immunotherapy Treatment to Another Centre — what has to move with you, what to request before the last cycle, and how to keep the thread between two teams intact.
• Online and Remote Second Opinions for Immunotherapy — how a review works on soft copies, what it can settle, and the two documents without which it cannot begin.
• Should You Go Abroad for Immunotherapy? — an honest look at what is genuinely different overseas, what is not, and the record set any foreign centre will ask for first.
• Immunotherapy at CION Cancer Clinics — how eligibility review, day-care treatment, monitoring between cycles and cost counselling fit together as one pathway.

Records Are Only Useful If Someone Reads Them

A 45-minute consultation, a tumour board where one is needed, and a written summary you can carry away with you.