How to download your lab results from FollowMyHealth
FollowMyHealth is the patient portal from Veradigm, the company formerly known as Allscripts. Hospitals and physician groups that use Veradigm’s record systems offer it, often under their own name, on the web and in the FollowMyHealth app. If you sign in at a followmyhealth.com address or in that app, this is the guide for you.
It is also a portal people leave. When a health system moves to another record system, its FollowMyHealth portal is retired; WVU Medicine’s Wheeling hospitals, for example, moved to MyChart in 2022. If that is happening to yours, get your history out before the switch.
Veradigm does not publish its patient help pages openly, so the steps below come from guides health systems give their own patients. Each organization configures the portal, so names can differ.
1. Export your records from the portal
FollowMyHealth sends your records to an email address or fax number rather than saving a file directly. WVU Medicine’s guide gives these steps, in the app:
- Sign in and open the menu, then select My Health.
- Open any section, such as Conditions.
- Select the Export icon at the top right of the screen.
- Choose what to export: your health records, or just clinical documents.
- Enter your personal email address, choose what to send, and select Send.
- Confirm the warning about sending health records by email.
(WVU Medicine: exporting from Follow My Health)
Best for: most people, and anyone whose organization is about to retire its FollowMyHealth portal.
Things to know:
- Email is not a private channel. The portal warns you about this for a reason. Send it to an account only you can read, save the attachment, and delete the message.
- Check what you received. The guides do not say which format the export arrives in. A standard health record file usually ends in .xml (a CCD) and can be read by other health apps; a PDF is readable by you but harder for software. If you only got a summary without results, export again and choose the health record option.
- One organization at a time. Each organization’s portal exports its own records.
HealthViewer reads CCD files. If your export arrives as a PDF HealthViewer does not recognize, it can read it with optional AI extraction, or you can send us a redacted sample.
2. Get the report from the lab
Hospital labs report into the hospital’s own record, but outpatient bloodwork often goes to Quest or Labcorp, and the lab keeps its own copy. See how to download your lab results from Quest and from Labcorp.
Best for: a long history, or results from a FollowMyHealth account you can no longer sign in to.
3. Request a copy of your records
For everything, including results the portal never showed, ask the organization’s health information management (medical records) department. Under 45 CFR 164.524, providers must respond within 30 calendar days, with one 30-day extension if they tell you in writing why, and can charge only a reasonable, cost-based fee. (HHS guidance on the right of access)
Ask for your records electronically, in the form you want, such as the CCD or a PDF of your lab results. If the organization has moved to a new system, ask specifically for the results from before the switch: older records sometimes stay in the old system rather than moving over. How to get all of your medical records covers what to ask for and what to do if they stall.
4. If your health system moved to MyChart
When an organization replaces FollowMyHealth with Epic, its new MyChart portal usually carries results from the switch date onward. Older results may be brought over too, or may stay behind in the archived system. WVU Medicine’s guide, for example, says information from its Wheeling hospitals flows into MyChart from April 1, 2022 onward, and that historical records can be requested from health information management.
So check how far back the new portal goes, export the old one while you still can, and request what is missing. For the new portal, see how to download your lab results from MyChart.
Which one should you use?
| If you want to… | Use |
|---|---|
| Get a copy of your record from an active account | Export from FollowMyHealth |
| Get the lab’s own reports | Quest or Labcorp’s portal |
| Get everything, or results from a retired account | A records request |
| Keep up with new results after a switch to Epic | The new MyChart |
Things that can be missing
- Results the organization has not released. Some results appear in the portal only after your provider reviews them.
- Older history. Organizations decide how far back the portal goes. The NIH Clinical Center’s portal FAQ, for example, says information from 2013 to mid-2019 includes only some lab results. (NIH Clinical Center: patient portal FAQ) A records request fills the gap.
- Records gathered from elsewhere. FollowMyHealth can pull in records from other organizations you connect, through an option some portals call Gather Health Records. Those come from the other organization’s system, so get your own copy there too.
After you download
- Duplicates. The same test can appear in the hospital’s record, in the lab’s own report, and in a new portal after a switch. Keep one.
- Dates and ranges. Use the date the sample was collected, and keep the reference range that came with each result.
Once the results are in one place, read them as a history. How to track your lab results over time walks through that. If you want a private place for all of it, HealthViewer is a lab results tracker that stores everything in an encrypted file on your own computer.
Results at another health system or lab too? How to download your lab results from any patient portal has the guide for each one.
FollowMyHealth is a trademark of Veradigm LLC. HealthViewer is not affiliated with or endorsed by Veradigm. Menu names and available features vary by organization. This post is general information, not legal advice.