How can obtain the medical history of my deceased ancestors?

Question

I know some information on my mothers side, as far back as her parents. But my father and his family have been dead for quite some time. I need this information for my children and grandchildren. I know both sides of the family had some major medical issues. Is there somewhere back east that keeps these records. We are haveing family medical problems and need this informationas soon as I can

Answer 1

There is a repository for medical information, but I don't think you'll be able to get anyone's records except your own. But if you want to try you can contact the Medical Information Bureau. There is a spot on their web page where you can request information:

http://www.mib.com/


The next way to find this information is to request medical records on your deceased relatives as their legal next of kin through the Medical Records department at the hospital where each died. You don't need to request the entire record, just the Discharge Summary which will list their medical history and the condition for which each was admitted. You will need to provide a copy of the death certificate for the person to show s/he is deceased and some kind of record (such as a birth certificate) to prove you are a blood relative. It's also easier to request these records through your physician's office and have the records sent there. Some hospitals have more difficulty releasing records to individuals or to attorneys.

The last way to get the information is to reconstruct it. That's done by pulling death certificates on all family members and building a family medical history. I know this sounds tedious, but it is fairly effective. Obviously you won't find out if Grandpa had diabetes if he died in a plane crash, but you will find out about diabetes in the family if it was a contributing factor to Grandma's heart attack and stroke. It helps to also look up the causes of death on all brothers and sisters in each generation because it gives a fuller view of all of the conditions that run in a family.

Hope this helps. If you need help with the hospitals let me know. I used to be a Medical Records manager at a hospital in Chicago.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

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Answer 4

When I took the Census several decades ago, I encountered people who wanted to know why the government was asking these questions. The long term Americans resented being asked considering it an invasion of privacy, but those who had lived in Europe wanted to know why we didn't look in the records downtown - they assumed records were kept on each citizen as they were in Europe. I explained that we went around every ten years to collect information to aid in planning the next 10 and to apportion our representatives, but we didn't keep any of it on each person in between each ten year census - we ask so we don't have to keep it.
Medical information has always been hard to find because doctors that a person is no longer seeing throw out records after 5 or 7 years (if that long). We had trouble getting data on my wife from a previous doctor only 6 years back. Under the new medical privacy laws, it is becoming even harder.
The other answers give some clues, but if you haven't kept up a family record that is passed around and down the generations, you don't have much chance. And even then there is a problem - my step mother is still alive, but asking her about my father's health problems is pointless because she had two more husbands after him, one of whom had great health problems, and my father died in 1979, almost 30 years ago.

Answer 5

There is no central repository for medical records. Your best bet to obtain medical info is through death certificates. You'll need the date and location of death. If you don't know the exact date of death, but know that they died after 1965, check the Social Security Death Index:
http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/

You can also look for dates of death via cemetery indexes; go to http://www.usgenweb.com and browse to the state and county where they are buried, then look for cemetery lists. On the state page will be information on how to obtain copies of death certificates for that state.

Most states didn't register deaths before 1900, so for earlier deaths your only hope is to find an obituary that gives the cause of death. Same drill with the cemetery lists to get the date of death; then google for the public library in the town where the cemetery is, and ask their reference department to do an obituary search.

The only other source I can think of are cemetery records, which may have the cause of death. And aside from cause of death, you are unlikely to find any other medical records unless your ancestor was in the military and drew a disability pension, in which case his pension file might have some records.

Answer 6

As other answers make clear, it's very difficult to get. Death records and family knowledge may be able to identify some things, but temporal distance, lifestyle changes, and the increase in medical knowledge may render this information next-to-useless.

If there is something specific that you are concerned about, you may want to talk to a genetic counselor and your doctor. You may be able to both allay some concerns and get tested for others (some genetic diseases, for instance).

Answer 7

A medical history is kind of like a genealogy in the sense that it is something that you have to build and it is unique to your family. I've been working on our family's for quite some time. There will be people to tell you to order everyones death certificates. That is a good start, but won't necessarily help. As the field of medicine has developed, it has brought about lots of changes. For example, my gr gr grandmother lived to be 95 years old and died in the 1920's . The only cause of death on her death certificate is listed as "senility." But knowing what we know now, could that have been Alzheimers? It is likely, but not something we know for sure since she died so long ago, and there likely aren't any medical files to research.

My husbands family has a lot of crazy ailments on his side and I worry for my daughter. My sister in law was just recently diagnosed with Porphyria and according to the doctors, it is an inherited strain of the disease. My sister in law asked me who she inherited it from since it was hereditary. I told her that according to public records, no one had it; however, due to the advances in medicine and changes in terminology it is possible that ANYONE had it.

When someone gets a disease, they don't necessarily suffer the same symptoms as someone else. In my sister-in-laws case it took a couple of years to get a correct diagnosis, because certain symptoms of Porphyria are often mistaken for Lupus or MS.

The only way to build any kind of medical history is to get what official records out there and talk to everyone you are able to in your family. You may know that your grandmother died from a heart attack, but you may not know that she took medicine for hypothyroidism or psoriasis. Many people don't die from those two ailments, but they both can be heriditary. Ask your parents, grandparents, cousins, aunt, Uncles, etc. Since you would be your fathers next of kin, you might be able to get his medical file, but just remember, due to privacy laws, they can be next to impossible to get.

I'm sorry I don't have any quick solutions, but this has been my experience in building my familys medical history. Blessings and good luck to you.

EDIT: Another thing to remember is that medical conditions can be a lot like your other inherited traits in that it can be found in one generation and then skip generations before it appears again. So, if you have something inherited and have gone back a few generations and not found it, it is possible that you haven't gone back far enough.