Making sense of your medical records

Getting a copy of your medical records is one thing. Reading them is another. A GP summary, a lab report and a hospital discharge summary are mostly written by clinicians, for other clinicians, and each one assumes you already know what the others say. If you have ever opened your patient portal, looked at your own results and not known what most of it meant, you are far from alone.

This article looks at why health information is so hard to follow, works through an example with diabetes, and suggests practical ways to make your own records easier to understand. It is general information, not medical advice, and it does not interpret anyone’s results.

Disclosure

I am a doctor, and I founded exora, a personal health record app. It appears once, near the end. Everything before that works whatever you use, including nothing at all.

Finding health information hard is normal

The Health Quality & Safety Commission, New Zealand’s national body for health quality and safety, gives a simple definition: “Health literacy is being able to obtain, understand and use basic health information to navigate health services and make appropriate health decisions.”

How many New Zealanders find that hard? The most detailed national figures come from a Ministry of Health report, Kōrero Mārama: Health Literacy and Māori, published in February 2010. It used the health-related questions in the 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey, which tested a nationally representative sample of 7,000 adults aged 16 to 65. The survey scored people on five levels. Level 3 is described as the “minimum required for individuals to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work in the emerging knowledge-based economy”, and the report treats a score below Level 3 as poor health literacy.

Its findings:

• “Overall the majority of New Zealanders are limited in their ability to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services in order to make informed and appropriate health decisions.”
• Just over half of non-Māori men and women had poor health literacy skills.
• Four out of five Māori men and three out of four Māori women had poor health literacy skills.
• Among the youngest group, 87.1% of Māori aged 16 to 18 had poor health literacy, compared with 69.1% of non-Māori the same age.

Two cautions. The survey is from 2006, so treat the exact figures with care; it is still the most detailed national measure I could find. And the survey’s levels are illustrated with everyday tasks, such as using a package label to work out a child’s medicine dose, written for the public. A medical record is not, so it is likely to be harder still.

The Commission does not treat this as a failing of patients. Its position is that “It is the responsibility of the health care professional to present health information in a way that a person can understand.” Kōrero Mārama makes a similar point: lifting health literacy needs effort from the health system, including “clearer communication by health professionals” and plain-language health information, not just from individuals.

Why records are hard to follow

• They are written for clinicians. Shorthand, abbreviations and diagnostic terms are efficient between professionals and opaque to everyone else.
• They are scattered. One part of your health can be spread across a GP, a hospital clinic, a community lab, a pharmacy and a private specialist, each with its own document.
• The connections are rarely written down. A prescription says what a medicine is and how much to take. It often does not say which condition it is for, and a blood test result does not say which condition it is monitoring.
• The same thing has several names. A medicine can appear under its brand name in one document and its ingredient name in another.
• There is a lot of it. Years of results and letters can run to hundreds of pages, and the important parts are not marked.

An example: diabetes

Take someone who has had type 2 diabetes for a few years. Health New Zealand’s page on the complications of diabetes (last updated 18 August 2026) describes the regular checks:

• a diabetes eye check at diagnosis, then at least every 2 years
• a foot check by your healthcare provider or podiatrist once a year
• blood tests that look at kidney function, and urine tests that measure protein
• regular checks for other things that raise heart and blood vessel risk, such as blood pressure and cholesterol

On top of those, Healthify says that with type 2 diabetes “you should get your HbA1c tested every 3 to 6 months.” HbA1c is, in Healthify’s words, “a measure of the amount of glucose in your blood over the previous 3 months.”

Each of those produces its own entry or document, often from a different place. The eye screening letter comes from one service, the blood results from a community lab, the foot check from a podiatrist.

Then there are the numbers. HbA1c is the one that tracks average blood glucose over time. But in a list of results it is one line among many, and nothing on the screen tells you it is the one your doctor is watching most closely.

Medicines are the same. Healthify’s type 2 diabetes overview says “the most commonly prescribed medicine is metformin.” Plenty of people take metformin every day without thinking of it as “my diabetes medicine”. On a prescription list it is just a name and a dose.

So the diabetes history that matters, how it was found, what treatment was started, how the HbA1c has moved since, and whether the eye and kidney checks are up to date, exists only in pieces. Your GP carries the joined-up picture in their head, or in their notes. Patients rarely get a copy of that picture.

Practical ways to make sense of yours

1. Start with what your patient portal already shows. Many GP practices share test results, and sometimes notes from your last appointment, through a portal such as ManageMyHealth or MyIndici. What appears depends on your practice. Our guide to test results in your patient portal explains what to expect. For anything missing, ask. Under rule 6 of the Health Information Privacy Code 2020 you have a right to your health information, and our New Zealand medical records guide explains how to request it.
2. Look up the shorthand. Healthify has a page of medical words explained. Its advice for anything else: “If you don’t understand a word or abbreviation, ask your GP, nurse, healthcare provider or pharmacist what it means.”
3. Ask what each medicine is for. The Commission’s Let’s P.L.A.N. for better care leaflet (October 2014) suggests questions to ask when you collect a medicine from a pharmacy, including “What is the medicine for?” and “How long do I need to take it for?” Write the answer down next to the medicine.
4. Ask which tests are the important ones. For a long-term condition, there are usually one or two results your doctor watches most closely. Knowing which ones means you can see whether they are being checked as often as planned.
5. Keep results together, in date order. A single result means little on its own. A series shows a trend, and your GP can tell you what that trend means for you.
6. Plan your questions before an appointment. The same leaflet’s four steps are to prepare for your visit, listen and share, ask questions, and note down what you need to do next. Its suggested questions include “What is my health problem?”, “What happens next?” and “Are there any other options?” It also suggests saying if you do not understand, and if a drawing could help.
7. Write a short summary in your own words. A few lines for each condition: when it started, what has been done, and where it stands. It helps when you see a new doctor.
8. Take someone with you. The leaflet reminds you that you can bring a support person and ask for a translator. A second person can listen, take notes, and ask the question you forgot.

If something in your records worries you, contact your GP or healthcare provider rather than searching for it. For health advice at any hour, Healthline is free on 0800 611 116. If someone is seriously unwell, call 111.

If a relative needs to read your records in another language, see our guide to getting medical records translated in New Zealand.

Where exora fits, and where it does not

exora is a personal health record app. You upload documents you already have, such as PDFs, photos or scans of letters and results, and exora reads them for you, with a reading system built for medical records. It organises the conditions, medicines, test results and visits into one record, with every detail linked back to the page it came from. exora is free to start, with an optional membership.

Health Stories goes a step further and does the joining up described above. A story starts from a condition, a treatment or an operation in your records, gathers the medicines, tests and visits that belong to it, and writes them up in plain language: where things stand, the story so far, and a timeline built from the records themselves. A Diabetes story brings the diabetes medicines on your record together with your HbA1c and glucose results and the visits where they came up, with each test shown on a chart and each record one tap away. Search for “metformin” and you find the Diabetes story it belongs to. Keeping stories up to date as you add documents is part of exora membership.

Where it does not help, plainly:

• It can misread. Stories are written by exora from your own records, and the reading is automated, so check anything that matters against the original. That is why every detail links back to it.
• It explains what your records say, not what they mean for you. It does not diagnose, interpret your results or tell you what to do. Talk to your GP about that.
• No connection to Health New Zealand. exora has no link to My Health Record, your GP’s portal or any Health New Zealand system, and no New Zealand health-data certification. It is only as complete as the documents you add.
• Your data is stored in Sydney, Australia, outside New Zealand. How we handle it is on our security page; read it before you upload anything.
• It is not medical advice.

If you are still gathering the documents, our guide to organising paper records and scans covers that step. For what My Health Record and your portal do and do not hold, see My Health Record versus a personal health record app.

The short version

Struggling with your records is normal. The Ministry of Health’s 2010 analysis of the 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey found that the majority of New Zealand adults had limited health literacy: just over half of non-Māori, and three in four or more Māori. Records are harder still, because they are written for clinicians, scattered across services, and rarely say how one thing connects to another. The Health Quality & Safety Commission says it is the professional’s job to explain things in a way you can understand. In the meantime, start with your portal, look up the abbreviations, ask what each medicine and test is for, keep results in date order, and take your questions to your GP.

Sources

• Ministry of Health: Kōrero Mārama, Health Literacy and Māori, results from the 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (February 2010) (sample, levels, the majority of New Zealanders, Māori and non-Māori figures, ages 16 to 18)
• Health Quality & Safety Commission: health literacy (definition, responsibility of health care professionals)
• Health Quality & Safety Commission: Let’s P.L.A.N. for better care (October 2014)
• Health New Zealand: complications of diabetes (eye, foot, kidney and other checks; last updated 18 August 2026)
• Healthify: HbA1c test, monitoring type 2 diabetes and type 2 diabetes overview
• Healthify: medical words explained
• Health New Zealand: Healthline
• Health Information Privacy Code 2020, rule 6 (access)

Statistics and guidance are sourced to the Ministry of Health, the Health Quality & Safety Commission, Health New Zealand and Healthify, linked inline, and were checked on 9 November 2026. The health literacy figures come from a 2006 survey published in 2010. This article is general information, not medical advice, and it does not interpret any result. How exora handles your information is in our privacy policy.