Preparing Your Medical Records for Care in China

Before you contact a hospital

A hospital can only tell you whether it may be able to help if it understands your situation. Whatever your condition, it helps to have:

• a short summary of the diagnosis and treatment so far, ideally written by your current doctor;
• recent test, pathology and imaging reports, with the images themselves where relevant;
• a list of current medicines and known allergies;
• what you are hoping the hospital can do.

Ask your current doctor which documents matter for your case. Ask the hospital which languages it accepts records in, and whether a translation must be certified. We have not found a national Chinese rule on translation of foreign records, so requirements are set hospital by hospital.

Share as little as necessary, as safely as possible

• Do not send records to ChinaMedMap. Our inquiry form deliberately has no file upload. We ask only for a category and a short description, and we will tell you if and when a hospital needs documents.
• Send documents only to a hospital’s official contact channel.
• Remove identifiers you do not need to share, such as national ID or insurance numbers.
• Avoid putting medical details in email subject lines.

China’s Personal Information Protection Law, in force since 1 November 2021, classes medical and health information as sensitive personal information. Processing it requires your separate consent, and so does transferring it across borders — in which case you must be told who receives it and why. Your home country’s privacy law may also apply.

After treatment: take your records home

Chinese regulations give patients the right to consult and copy their records. The material you may copy includes outpatient records, the admission record, doctors’ orders, laboratory reports, imaging, consent forms, surgery and anaesthesia records, pathology, nursing records and the record of medical costs. You will need valid identification; someone acting for you needs both parties’ identification, proof of the relationship and a power of attorney.

Under the national records rules, outpatient records are in principle kept by the patient, while hospitals must retain outpatient records they hold for at least 15 years and inpatient records for at least 30 years.

Ask for copies before you leave, and ask whether an English discharge summary is available. We have not found national rules on fees, turnaround or translation for copies, so check with the hospital.

Tell us what you need →

Sources

1. 医疗纠纷预防和处理条例 (State Council Decree 701) (reprint)State Council (reprinted by Beijing Municipal Health Commission) · Chinese · dated 2018-10-01 · retrieved 21 September 2026
2. 医疗机构病历管理规定（2013年版）National Health and Family Planning Commission (State Council Gazette) · Chinese · dated 2013-11-20 · retrieved 21 September 2026
3. Personal Information Protection Law of the PRC (English)Supreme People’s Procuratorate · English · dated 2021-12-29 · retrieved 21 September 2026
4. 中华人民共和国个人信息保护法Cyberspace Administration of China · Chinese · dated 2021-08-20 · retrieved 21 September 2026

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