Why Bringing Your Medical Records Matters — Especially Before Surgery
When you come to Desert West Surgery for a consultation, you’re taking an important step toward understanding your health and getting the care you need. One thing that patients are often surprised to learn is that there is no universal medical record system. Hospitals, clinics, imaging centers, and specialists frequently use different electronic systems that don’t automatically communicate with each other.
This means that you—the patient—are often the only person who has access to all the pieces of your medical story. And when it comes to surgical care, those details matter.
Why You Are the Keeper of Your Health Information
While we do our best to gather outside reports, many medical records are not instantly available. Even when requests are sent, delays are common—especially for imaging, pathology, or older records. When surgeons don’t have complete information, it can impact:
Bringing your records keeps your care moving forward and allows your surgeon to make fully informed decisions at your very first visit.
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Optimizing How Your Records Flow Between Facilities
There are steps patients can take to improve how well their medical records travel between hospitals, specialists, and clinics:
✔ Opt in to records sharing during registration
Whenever you check in at a hospital, imaging center, urgent care, or specialist’s office, you may be asked whether you want your information shared for care coordination.
Choosing “yes” allows your records to flow through health information exchanges such as CommonWell and other national networks.
This can help make the following more readily available to your surgeon:
Even with these systems in place, gaps still exist — and bringing your own copies remains the most reliable way to ensure your surgeon has what they need.
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Desert West Surgery’s Commitment to Interoperability
Desert West Surgery uses Athenahealth EMR, which is designed to maximize interoperability and reduce delays caused by fragmented medical systems.
Through Athenahealth, our practice participates in major national health information exchange frameworks, including:
These integrations allow us to retrieve medical records from many hospitals, urgent care centers, and physician groups. However, not all systems participate, and even participating systems may experience delays or incomplete data.
For that reason, bringing your own records is still the single most effective way to ensure nothing is missed.
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What Records Are Most Important to Bring to a Surgical Consultation
✔ Pathology and Biopsy Results
If you’ve had any biopsies—skin, breast, lymph node, colon polyp, thyroid nodule, or otherwise—bring the full pathology report. This information often guides surgical decision-making.
✔ Imaging Studies
Bring the reports and, when possible, the actual images on a CD.
A note on CDs:
Bringing a CD with images to the office can be useful, especially for patients coming from Optum/Southwest Medical or Culinary health systems, where external image access is often limited. CDs brought during a busy clinic may not allow the surgeon to load the CD, download viewing software, and review the images during the appointment itself. The images may still be very valuable for planning. If your surgeon determines that they need to review the CD more carefully, they may ask that the CD be left for later evaluation. If so, please be prepared to retrieve the CD after review.
Imaging access notes:
Desert Radiology and SDMI/Steinberg Diagnostic often provide surgeons with online access to imaging. Even so, bringing the imaging report—and a CD when available—can still be helpful and may avoid delays.
Important imaging includes:
✔ Endoscopy and Colonoscopy Reports
If you’ve had an EGD (upper endoscopy) or colonoscopy, the procedure report and biopsy results are essential. These procedures often provide details that cannot be seen on imaging alone.
✔ Prior Operative Reports
If you’ve had surgery elsewhere—hernia repairs, gallbladder removal, C-sections, orthopedic procedures, anything—operative reports help us understand what’s been done and how to plan safely moving forward.
✔ Medication Lists, Allergies, and General Medical History
Although we review these in the office, having your own up-to-date list ensures accuracy.
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Why This Matters More for Surgery Than Routine Care
Surgery often depends on precise details: measurements on imaging, margins on a biopsy, findings during a prior procedure, or subtle anatomy that varies from person to person. When your surgeon has complete information *from day one*, you get:
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How to Gather Your Records
Most centers will provide your records the same day if you request them. You can ask for:
If you’re not sure which records to bring, consider that it is easier to determine whether the record you bring is helpful than to determine whether an absent record would have helped with operation planning.
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The Bottom Line
Because there is no single shared medical record system, you are the central link between all of your providers. Bringing your medical records—especially imaging, biopsy reports, and endoscopy results—helps your Desert West Surgery team deliver the safest, most efficient, and most accurate surgical care possible.
