In most families, one person ends up holding everyone’s health history in their head. Which specialist said what. Whether the dose changed. When the last blood test was. Whether Dad’s cardiologist knows about the medication the GP started. Often that person is doing it for children and for their own parents at the same time, from memory, between other jobs.
There is a thing nobody tells you until the moment you need it, and it is the reason this gets hard: caring for someone does not give you any right to see their health records. Responsibility and authority are separate, and they come apart at exactly the wrong moments. This article is about how access actually works in Australia, and what to arrange before you need it.
Disclosure: I founded exora, which does multi-person health records, and it appears near the end. The rest applies regardless of what software you use.
Three situations, three different answers
Nearly everyone reading this is in one of three positions, and they work differently:
- Your own young children. You have authority automatically, and it ends sooner than you expect.
- A parent or partner who can still make their own decisions. Easy to arrange, needs their participation, and almost nobody does it in advance.
- Someone who can no longer make their own decisions. Much harder, needs legal authority, and the rules differ by state.
Your own children, and the age-14 cliff
For a child under 14 who is on the same Medicare card, a parent or guardian can be an authorised representative for their My Health Record, with full access and control. Straightforward, and most parents who have set it up find it useful mainly for immunisation history.
Then there is the part that catches people out. When a child turns 14, all representatives are removed from their record automatically. Not restricted, not reduced - removed. Your access ends on their birthday, without a prompt, and the teenager gains control of their own record.
If you want continued access after that, they have to grant it to you, as a nominated representative. That is their decision to make, and there is no way around it - which is the point of the rule. (Source: the Australian Digital Health Agency’s guidance on accessing a child’s record, and a plain-language summary from Carers Australia.)
Worth saying clearly: this is a good rule. Adolescents need to be able to see a doctor about contraception, mental health, sexual health or drug and alcohol questions and know the conversation is theirs. A system where a parent silently retains access to all of that would deter exactly the fourteen-year-olds who most need to walk into a clinic. The confidentiality is doing something.
The practical advice, then, is not a workaround. It is a conversation before the birthday rather than a surprise after it. Something like: your record becomes yours next month, which is how it should be, and I would still like to be able to help with appointments and immunisations if you are happy for me to. Most teenagers say yes when asked. Fewer say yes when they discover you have been looking.
Immunisation records for childcare and school
The one document most parents need on demand is an Immunisation History Statement from the Australian Immunisation Register. Enrolment requirements vary between states, but across much of the country an AIR statement is the only acceptable proof of a child’s immunisation status for childcare, kindergarten and primary school enrolment - not your own records, and not a letter from the GP.
The fastest way to get one is your Medicare online account through myGov, or the Express Plus Medicare app. Your immunisation provider can also print one, and the AIR enquiries line is 1800 653 809. If you are not eligible for a Medicare card, the AIR can post one, which takes up to a couple of weeks - so do not leave that until enrolment week.
A parent who can still make their own decisions
This is the most common situation and the one people most over-complicate. If your mother is perfectly capable and simply wants help managing appointments and medications, you do not need legal authority over anything. She invites you.
For My Health Record, that is a nominated representative: the record owner invites you and chooses your access level - general, restricted or full. No identity documents are required, because the authority comes from her rather than from a process.
The thing worth internalising is the timing. Set this up on an ordinary Tuesday, not during a hospital admission. A nominated representative can only be appointed by someone who is able to appoint one. Every family that has done this in a crisis will tell you the same thing: the paperwork is not the hard part, the conversation is, and the conversation is much easier over a cup of tea than in a corridor.
The same logic applies to the informal things that matter more day to day. Ask her to tell her GP that you are involved in her care and that she is happy for you to be spoken to. Note it down when she does. It is not legally binding and it will smooth a dozen phone calls.
A parent who can no longer make their own decisions
This is where it gets genuinely complicated, and where I am going to point you elsewhere rather than pretend an article can settle it.
For My Health Record specifically, the role is authorised representative - for someone who is not able to make decisions for themselves. It carries complete access and control, and because of that the process is more demanding: applying requires 100 points of identification.
Underneath that sits the real question, which is whether you have legal authority to make decisions for that person at all. Here is the trap worth knowing about, because a lot of families get it wrong: the terminology and the powers differ substantially between states, and “power of attorney” does not mean the same thing everywhere. In New South Wales, a power of attorney covers financial decisions only and cannot be used to make health or medical decisions - that requires an enduring guardian. In South Australia, since the Advance Care Directives Act 2013, you can no longer appoint a medical agent or enduring guardian at all; those roles were replaced by substitute decision-makers under Advance Care Directives. Elsewhere the role might be called a medical treatment decision-maker, a person responsible, or an attorney for health matters.
So “I have power of attorney for Mum” may or may not mean what you think it means, depending on which state you are in and which document you signed.
Two authoritative, free, non-commercial places to check your own jurisdiction: End of Life Law in Australia at end-of-life.qut.edu.au, maintained by QUT, which covers every state and territory - the two links above go to its NSW and SA pages - and Advance Care Planning Australia on what being a substitute decision-maker involves. This is general information and not legal advice; for a specific situation, your state’s public advocate or public trustee, or a solicitor, is the right call.
The single most useful thing in this whole article: arrange this while it is hypothetical. Advance care planning documents are free, they are not only for the very old or very ill, and the difference between a family that has them and a family that does not becomes visible within about an hour of an unexpected admission.
Being a carer without being next of kin
The hardest position is responsibility without authority - a friend, a neighbour, a partner who is not recognised, an adult child among several siblings who disagree. You are doing the work and you have no standing.
What actually helps:
- Get nominated while you can. The person you care for can appoint you as a nominated representative for their My Health Record, and can tell their providers you are involved. Both are easy while they are well.
- Keep your own record. Nothing stops you keeping notes, copies of documents you are given, and a current medication list. That is yours, and in practice it is the thing clinicians actually want when they ask “what is she taking?”
- Ask for things in writing, at the time. A discharge summary, a copy of the referral, the specialist’s letter. Asking at the appointment is far easier than requesting it later.
- Know that the person themselves has full rights. They can request every record any provider holds about them, and you can help them do it. Here is how that works.
What actually helps day to day
Legal access is necessary and it is not the thing that makes a Tuesday easier. What makes a Tuesday easier is smaller:
- A current medication list per person - names, doses, who prescribed it, when it changed. This is the single highest-value document in family care and it is almost always out of date.
- A one-page summary per person - conditions, allergies, key history, current providers. What you would want to hand someone in an emergency department.
- The answer to “what changed since last time”, which is the question that connects the GP and the specialist and the hospital, and the one nobody has written down.
Note where the government layer stops here. My Health Record is per person, so managing three people means three records you switch between, and it holds what providers have uploaded rather than what you have gathered. It is genuinely worth having for each of them - I compared it properly with the alternatives in this article - but it will not assemble a family picture for you, and it was never trying to.
Where exora fits
exora is built for this specific shape of problem: one account, a separate profile for each person you care for, and each profile holding its own complete health record. You upload whatever documents you have for each person - the discharge summary, the specialist letter, the pathology PDF - and it reads them and assembles conditions, medications, results and immunisations into a record with a timeline, with every fact linked back to the page it came from. You can share one person’s record, or selected categories of it, with a co-parent, a sibling or a clinician, with an expiry and the ability to revoke. It is free, and data is stored in Sydney.
Where it does not help:
- It is not legal authority. Creating a profile for your mother in an app does not make you her representative or her decision-maker. Those are arranged through the processes above, and nothing in software substitutes for them.
- You still need her agreement. Managing an adult’s health information without their knowledge is a problem no product should solve, and this one does not.
- It cannot get documents you do not have. You or the person themselves still have to request them.
- It is not medical advice. It organises information. It does not diagnose and it does not tell you what to do.
If the immediate job is a filing cabinet of paper for three people, start with the practical guide to digitising it instead - that comes first regardless.
A short checklist
- Children under 14: set yourself up as authorised representative; keep a current Immunisation History Statement from the AIR.
- Approaching 14: have the conversation before the birthday. Access ends automatically, and only they can restore it.
- Capable adults you help: ask them to nominate you now, while it is routine. Ask them to tell their GP you are involved.
- Anyone ageing: get advance care planning documents done while it is hypothetical, and check what the relevant role is called in your state.
- Everyone: maintain a medication list and a one-page summary per person. If you do nothing else on this list, do this one.
My Health Record representative rules and age thresholds are sourced to the Australian Digital Health Agency and Carers Australia, and substitute decision-making law to QUT’s End of Life Law in Australia and Advance Care Planning Australia, all linked inline and checked on 30 July 2026. Immunisation enrolment requirements are set by states and territories and vary; check your own. This article is general information, not legal or medical advice. Substitute decision-making law differs by jurisdiction and turns on the specific documents in place - for a real situation, seek advice from your state’s public advocate, public trustee, or a solicitor.
