Someone at your old clinic told you to ask for a treatment summary before you leave. Or the new clinic asked for one at booking, and you are not sure whether that means your whole file, a letter written for the occasion, or something you are supposed to produce yourself.
A treatment summary is a short document that says where your care has got to. One to three pages is typical: your relevant history, what has been tried, what is current, and when the next review was due. Your full health record is a separate and much longer thing, and you can ask for both in the same email.
Before you ask:
- A summary and a full record are two different requests. Clinics often hear one and send the other.
- There is no national template. What arrives depends on the clinic’s software and how much notice you gave.
- Put the request in writing. A dated email is what you will point at if nothing comes back.
- Name the format you want. A PDF you can forward is worth more to you than a posted photocopy.
What is a treatment summary?
It is the working version of your file. Somebody who has never met you should be able to read it in five minutes and know enough to see you safely.
Australian general practice has a standard for this. The RACGP’s Standards for general practices (5th edition) sets criterion QI2.1, which requires practices to keep a current health summary in each active patient record. The college’s stated reason is practical: a current summary reduces the risk of inappropriate management, including medicine interactions, and gives a locum or a registrar enough of an overview to continue providing safe and effective care.
That is the same problem you are solving when you move. The new Clinician is, for one appointment, a locum on your case.
What should a treatment summary contain?
The RACGP list under QI2.1 is the benchmark, and it is worth knowing because it gives you something specific to ask for:
- Adverse drug reactions and known allergies
- A current medicines list
- Current health problems
- Past health history
- Immunisations
- Family history
- Health risk factors, meaning smoking, nutrition, alcohol and physical activity
- Social history, including cultural background
For a transfer, four more items matter and are often left out unless you ask:
- Dates. When your care started, how many consultations there have been, and when the last review was.
- What was tried and stopped, and why. This is the single most useful line for a new Clinician and the one most often missing. Without it the new clinic either repeats something that did not suit you or spends an appointment working it out.
- The current plan and the review interval. What you are on now, in the clinic’s own words, and when the next review was scheduled.
- Any approval or authority that names your treating Clinician. Approvals of that kind are issued to a named practitioner and do not move with you automatically, so the new clinic needs to know one exists and when it runs out. The approval expiry guide covers how those dates work.
How is a treatment summary different from your full record?
Your full record is every consultation note, result, referral and letter the clinic holds. Your entitlement to it is Commonwealth law: Australian Privacy Principle 12, under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), gives you access to the personal information a private health service provider holds about you, and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner treats every private health service provider in Australia as covered, whatever its size.
A summary is a document somebody writes. An access request under APP 12 is a request for what already exists. That distinction is why the two can come back at different speeds and different prices, and it is why asking for “my records” sometimes produces a two-line letter and sometimes produces ninety pages.
Ask for both, in one email, and say which you want first. Your right to your health records sets out the access side in full: the thirty-day working limit, what a clinic may charge, and what to do with a refusal.
How do you ask for one?
Email reception rather than phoning, so the request is dated and in writing. Something close to this does the job:
I am transferring my care to another clinic. Could you please send me two things: a treatment summary covering my care with you, and a copy of my full health record under APP 12. I would like both as PDFs by email. Please confirm any fee before you produce them. My date of birth is [date] and the phone number you have on file is [number].
Naming APP 12 tells whoever opens the email that this is an access request with a clock attached to it, rather than a favour. Asking for PDFs stops a posted bundle arriving that you then have to scan. Asking about the fee up front avoids the awkward version of that conversation, which is the one that happens after the work is already done.
If you already have your first appointment at the new clinic booked, say the date. It gives reception something to plan against.
What can it cost, and how long should it take?
Clinics differ, and the difference is not arbitrary. Retrieving a record is administrative work. Writing a summary is clinical work, and some clinics treat it as a short billable appointment rather than a reception task.
A clinic cannot charge you for making an access request. It can charge a non-excessive amount for producing the records themselves. A written summary sits outside that and is priced by the clinic. Ask, and get the number before you agree.
On timing, thirty calendar days is the outer working limit for a response to an access request from a private provider. A summary usually arrives sooner than that, because it is one document rather than a file to be collated. Give two weeks before you chase, and chase in the same email thread so the whole history sits in one place.
Does the clinic have to give you one?
Two different obligations are in play and they do not cover the same ground.
RACGP criterion GP2.4 requires an accredited general practice to transfer care to another practitioner when a patient requests it, to document the decision in the record, and to transfer the patient’s health information to another practitioner. The same criterion applies when the practitioner is the one ending the relationship. The standards do not set a timeframe for it.
Not every clinic you deal with is an accredited general practice, and a telehealth service may not be. What applies everywhere is APP 12. The access right sits with you regardless of the clinic’s accreditation, its size, or whether it is still taking new patients.
The summary therefore depends partly on the clinic’s goodwill. The record does not. If a clinic declines to write a summary, ask for the record instead and let the new Clinician read it.
What if the clinic has closed, or nobody answers?
This has happened often enough in Australian telehealth to plan for. If the clinic has been absorbed by a larger group, the files usually moved with it and the new owner is the one to ask. If it has closed outright, records still have to be kept and held somewhere, so ask where they went before assuming they are gone.
When an access request goes unanswered past thirty days, the complaint route is the OAIC, and a refusal has to arrive in writing with reasons. Your right to your health records has the steps.
Meanwhile, do not stall the clinical side waiting for paperwork. A new Clinician can start with what you can tell them and what you have kept yourself. Moving to a new telehealth clinic sets out what to gather before the first appointment, and the changing clinics page runs through how a transfer actually works.
What to do with it once you have it
Read it properly before you forward it. Summaries are written quickly and they carry errors: a medicine you stopped two years ago still listed as current, an allergy missing, a date wrong by a year. You are the only person who can catch those, and the new clinic will take the document at face value.
Send it ahead of the appointment rather than bringing it to one. A Clinician who has read your summary the day before starts the consultation somewhere useful. A Clinician handed three pages at the start of a consultation reads it in front of you, on your time.
Then keep your own copy somewhere you will find it again. Two years from now, the copy sitting in your own email or files is the one you will actually be able to open.
The bottom line
Ask for the summary and the record together, in writing, in a format you can forward, with the fee confirmed before the work starts. The summary is the document that makes the first appointment at the new clinic worth what you pay for it, and requesting it takes one email. If you are only going to do one thing before you move, do this one.
Australian advertising law limits what any clinic may say publicly about prescription medicines, so this article stays with the paperwork and the process. Anything specific to your own care belongs in a consultation.
At LeafLine Clinic, transfers are handled by the patient-support team, and the changing clinics page lists what we ask you to bring and what we chase on your behalf. If you would rather ask how it works before committing to anything, the 10-minute info call involves no clinical assessment and no payment.
This article is general information only, not legal or medical advice. The health summary contents and the transfer obligation are from the RACGP Standards for general practices (5th edition), criteria QI2.1 and GP2.4, as published at racgp.org.au and checked on 14 September 2026. The access right is Australian Privacy Principle 12 under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), as set out by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
