When Jennifer’s doctor asked about her last MRI, she paused. She knew the results were somewhere—an email, an online patient portal, maybe a CD from a hospital she no longer used—but she couldn’t remember the date or where to look. With no time to search, the visit moved on.
It’s a familiar moment in American exam rooms. As care spreads across specialists, hospitals, and health systems, medical records scatter with it. Many patients now receive care across multiple systems, often juggling two, three, or more portals that don’t communicate with one another.