To share medical records with Fishtown Medicine, upload PDFs of past labs, imaging reports, and specialist notes through the Ultralight app, or sign a release so we can request them directly from Penn, Jefferson, or Temple. Aim to share records 48 hours before your first visit.
Past medical data is the foundation of your future Personalized Health Strategy. By securely sharing your medical records, you allow Dr. Ash to see long-term trends, avoid redundant testing, and find clues that a single point-in-time visit would miss.
Why does your medical history matter?
In the traditional insurance-based system, medical records are siloed. A lab from Penn may not be visible at Jefferson. Fragmentation creates a disconnected experience for the patient. At Fishtown Medicine, the goal is to act as your "Medical Quarterback," and that requires the full picture of your medical history.
When we have 5 to 10 years of historical data, we can identify markers that are technically normal but trending in the wrong direction. That is what makes the proactive, preventive care of Medicine 3.0 possible.
How we read your old records: the lens we use
When your records reach us, we read them again ourselves, with a different question in mind than the doctors who originally ordered them.
A cardiologist looks at a lipid panel and asks, "Is there disease here today?" An endocrinologist looks at a fasting glucose and asks the same question. That is the right question for their job. Their reference range marks what is normal rather than what is optimal.
Our background runs the other direction. We have spent years caring for high-complexity, geriatric patients, the population where the gap between "normal" and "optimal" becomes most visible. We have seen 90-year-olds who function like 60-year-olds, and 60-year-olds who function like 90-year-olds. The difference is rarely one big diagnosis. It is dozens of small signals over decades that someone caught early or missed.
So when we re-review your old labs, imaging reports, and specialist notes, we are reading for trajectory. A fasting glucose of 99 today is "normal." A creep from 85 to 99 over 5 years is a story. A TSH of 3.8 today is "normal." A move from 1.2 to 3.8 over 3 years tells us something different. We pull every chapter we can get our hands on so we can read the whole story rather than the current page alone.
How do I securely share my medical records?
We provide multiple secure ways to import your history. Most files go through the Ultralight member portal, protected by HIPAA-grade encryption. When you are downloading records straight from a hospital portal like MyChart, the simplest route is to upload them on your member page.
1. The Mobile Scan
If you have paper copies of your records, you do not need a flatbed scanner. The Google Drive app on your phone has a built-in document scanner that crops, deskews, and saves each page to a clear PDF. Scan the stack, save the PDF, and upload it to Ultralight for Dr. Ash to review. Google's step-by-step guide covers both iOS and Android.
2. Patient Portal Exports (Epic MyChart)
Epic MyChart powers the patient portals at Cooper (MyCooper), Penn, Jefferson, Temple, Geisinger, and Mainline Health, so one path covers almost everyone. You can do this from your phone or a computer. The screenshots below are from Cooper, and the steps look nearly the same on every system. The highlighted spot in each picture is where to tap.
1. Open the menu and go to Sharing Hub. Log in to MyChart, open the menu (the ☰ icon), and search "sharing." Choose Sharing Hub, not Share Everywhere. Share Everywhere only gives another office a temporary live view of your chart, and it does not send us a copy.
2. Choose Healthcare provider.
3. Choose "Download or send a snapshot."
4. Pick All Visits, then Continue. This pulls your full history rather than a single visit.
5. Tap "Download all." On the Preview Documents screen, use Download all, not Send all. The Send all button has a glitch as of this writing, so download the file instead.
6. Request the download. You can skip the optional password step. Tap Request download.
7. Wait for the "ready" notification. MyChart prepares your file in the background, so it is not ready the moment you ask. You will get a notification when it is done, and that can take up to 24 hours depending on how many records you have. Until then it sits under "Not yet ready," and there is nothing else you need to do.
8. Open the ready file and upload it to us. Once the notification arrives, come back to the same screen and open the file under "Ready for download." Save it to your phone or computer, then upload it to the Records section of your member page:
If you have more than one health system linked inside a single MyChart login, do this once for each system. Once your file is uploaded it goes straight onto your chart, and we take it from there.
3. Let Us Pull Them For You
When you signed on, 2 consent forms came through Ultralight: consent to treat and consent to coordinate care. Signing the coordinate-care form is what lets us request records on your behalf. Once it is signed, send a message in Ultralight telling us where to pull from - the practice name, hospital, or system - and our team handles the rest.
The more history you share, the better we can take care of you, and the better your results will be.
How do I share wearable data (Apple Watch, Oura, Whoop)?
Wearable data rounds out the picture between visits: sleep, resting heart rate, heart-rate variability, workouts. A screenshot of your trend view shows the graph your app decided to draw, and that only tells part of the story. The full export carries every data point underneath the graph, and that is what lets us read the whole story instead of a summary of it.
If you use Apple Health, Oura, Whoop, or Garmin, pulling the full export takes a couple of taps and gets you the complete picture. If a screenshot is all you have in the moment, text it over and we will ask for the full export when a question calls for the deeper data.
Which records are most important?
While we value a complete history, we prioritize the following diagnostic records for your initial evaluation:
- Lab Results: Complete blood counts, metabolic panels, and any advanced lipid panels from the last 3 to 5 years.
- Imaging Reports: Radiologist reports for MRIs, CT scans, or ultrasounds (you do not need the DICOM images unless requested).
- Specialist Summaries: Consult notes from cardiologists, gastroenterologists, or endocrinologists.
- Vaccination Records: Particularly helpful for travel medicine and seasonal planning.
What if I don't have old records?
That is fine, and more common than you might think. Many of our patients walk in with no records at all, either because they have not had a full workup or because they have moved across the country and lost track of where the records live. There is no "you came in too late." We start the story here.
When the historical chapter is missing, 2 tools can fill some of the gap:
- A thorough new workup. A complete current panel (advanced lipids, fasting insulin, full thyroid, micronutrients, hormones, inflammation markers) creates the baseline that future years will trend from. From the second visit onward, you have a story.
- Targeted genetic testing, only if you want it. When you do not know your family history or your inherited risk, genetic testing can be a useful one-time read. We do not push it. Many patients are reasonably cautious about adding genetic data to their record, and that is a fine position to hold. If you are curious, we will walk through which specific tests would change the plan, and which ones would not.
We take the chapter that you're here to share, and write the rest of the book with you.
Guidelines from the Clinic
How Fishtown Medicine approaches data integration
We read every page. During your Initial Diagnostic Evaluation, we integrate this data into our Systems-Thinking Map. We look for the "why" behind your history rather than stopping at the "what."
Actionable Steps for Philly
Take ownership of your medical data.
- Request Access: Make sure you have active logins for Penn, Jefferson, and any other systems you use in Philadelphia.
- Organize Your Files: Create a dedicated "Health" folder on your computer or phone for secure PDF storage.
- Upload Before Your Visit: Sharing records 48 hours before your first consult lets Dr. Ash review them in detail, which makes face-to-face time far more productive.
Dr. Ash is a board-certified internal medicine physician specializing in preventive medicine and healthspan optimization at Fishtown Medicine in Philadelphia. He takes a systems-thinking approach that goes beyond treating symptoms to help patients extend their healthspan.
Scientific References
- U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. "HIPAA Privacy Rule and Patient Access to Health Information." HHS.gov. 2024.
- Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. "Continuity of Care Document (CCD) Specification." ONC. 2023.
- Bates DW, et al. "Improving safety with information technology." New England Journal of Medicine. 2021 update.
- Zulman DM, et al. "Patient access to longitudinal health records and outcomes." JAMA Internal Medicine. 2020.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common Questions
Deep-Dive Questions
Ready when you are
Dr. Ash reads every intake himself, and answers questions personally - usually within a few hours.
