How to download your lab results from any patient portal
Every patient portal hides the download in a different menu, but underneath they offer the same few ways out: connect an app, download the whole record, save one result, or ask for a copy. This page sends you to the guide for your portal, and covers what to do if yours isn’t one of them.
Find your portal
| Portal | You’re on it if | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| MyChart (Epic) | Your hospital or health system’s portal says MyChart, or the login page mentions Epic. Most large US health systems use it. | MyChart |
| Oracle Health (Cerner) | The login page or app mentions Oracle Health, HealtheLife or Cerner, often under the hospital’s own name. | Oracle Health |
| athenahealth | An independent practice or small medical group’s portal says “powered by athenahealth,” or you sign in with an athenahealth account. | athenahealth |
| Kaiser Permanente | You’re a Kaiser member and use kp.org or the Kaiser app. | Kaiser Permanente |
| The VA | You get care at a VA medical center or clinic and use My HealtheVet on VA.gov. | The VA |
| Quest Diagnostics | Your blood was drawn at a Quest location, or the report has Quest’s name on it. You use MyQuest. | Quest |
| Labcorp | Your blood was drawn at a Labcorp patient service center, or the report has Labcorp’s name on it. You use MyLabcorp. | Labcorp |
Two kinds of portal, two copies of one result. When your doctor sends a sample to Quest or Labcorp, the result shows up in your doctor’s portal and in the lab’s. The lab’s copy covers tests from every doctor who has ordered from it, including a practice you have left or an urgent care you visited once, so it is worth getting both.
The ways out, in every portal
The menus differ; the options don’t. Each guide walks through these for its portal:
| Way | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Connect an app | Results delivered as data, through the SMART on FHIR standard, and kept up to date | An ongoing, chartable copy of your labs |
| Download your health record | A ZIP or a CCD file of your whole record, once | A portable backup of everything |
| Save a single result | A PDF of one report | Sending one result somewhere |
| Request a copy | The complete official record, which you have a legal right to | Older results, and anything the portal leaves out |
| The lab’s own portal | The report as the lab issued it, from Quest or Labcorp | Results from several doctors in one place |
| Apple Health | Results on your iPhone, from a health system you connected under Health Records | Looking a result up on the go |
For most people the answer is an app connection where the portal offers one, with the record download as a backup, and the lab’s portal for tests that went out to Quest or Labcorp. If you have used several health systems, do this for each one: no single portal shows another system’s labs unless those records were pulled in.
If your portal isn’t listed
The same options exist almost everywhere, under other names:
- Look for a download in the portal’s health record menu. Words to look for: Health Record, Download, Export, Share, Health Summary, Visit Records, or Blue Button. The file is usually a PDF, a ZIP, or a CCD (an XML file).
- Check whether the portal works with apps. Federal rules require the record systems US health systems use to let patients connect apps, through the SMART on FHIR standard. If an app can find your health system by name, you can connect it.
- Go to the lab. If your results came from Quest or Labcorp, their portals have them regardless of which portal your doctor uses.
- Ask for a copy. Under HIPAA you have the right to your records, electronically if they keep them that way, within 30 days (or 60, if they tell you in writing why they need longer). How to get all of your medical records covers what to ask for, and what to do when a provider stalls.
After you download
What you have depends on the way you chose, and each kind of file has a tool to read it:
- A lab report PDF. The lab PDF to spreadsheet converter turns one into a CSV or Excel file.
- An Apple Health export. The Apple Health export tool pulls the lab results out of export.zip, and your device vitals if you want them.
- A FHIR or Blue Button JSON file. The FHIR JSON viewer lays it out as readable tables.
- Results you want to keep together. The lab results spreadsheet template has the columns for a running history, and how to track lab results over time covers what to chart.
A spreadsheet works until there are several portals feeding it. The HealthViewer app connects to Epic and Cerner portals directly, reads the PDFs from the rest, and keeps every result in one encrypted file on your own computer, with each test matched across labs and charted over time.
MyChart is a trademark of Epic Systems Corporation; Oracle Health, Cerner and HealtheLife of Oracle and/or its affiliates; athenahealth of athenahealth, Inc.; Kaiser Permanente and kp.org of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc.; My HealtheVet and Blue Button of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Quest Diagnostics and MyQuest of Quest Diagnostics Incorporated; Labcorp and MyLabcorp of Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings; Apple of Apple Inc. HealthViewer is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Menu names and available features can change. This post is general information, not legal advice.