How to Request Your Military and Medical Records

Because six separate offices built six separate files. The DD Form 214 and the rest of the Official Military Personnel File are personnel administration, kept by the branch and then by the National Archives. Service treatment records are the medical file from active duty, a different file that went to a different place depending on when you separated. VA health records are the care VA itself delivered. Private treatment records belong to every civilian clinic, urgent care and hospital that ever saw you. The claims file, usually called the C-file, is VA's own file about your benefits claims and is not a medical record at all. Correcting a military record that is wrong is not a records request; it is an application to a board.

Asking the wrong office is the most common way a request comes back empty. The National Archives does not hold your VA treatment notes. VA does not hold your civilian orthopedist's imaging. A branch medical records center does not hold a rating decision. Six files, six addresses, and in most cases six different forms. VA's own records hub carries entries for military records, medical records and personal records, and no entry at all for service treatment records or for records held by a private doctor, which is a fair part of why veterans end up guessing.

The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis is part of the National Archives. It holds Official Military Personnel Files from all service branches, and it holds military health and medical records of discharged and deceased veterans, retirees and military family members treated at military service medical facilities.

VA holds two unrelated things under one name. The health side holds the clinical record of care VA delivered to you. The benefits side holds the claims file, which is a different system, a different request and a different form. Civilian providers hold their own records and always have, whether the practice is one physician or a hospital network.

Record corrections go somewhere else again. The board that can change a military record is the Board for Correction of Military Records for your branch, which sits inside the Department of Defense. The National Archives states directly that correction forms should not be sent to the National Archives, and routes them to the branch review board for archival records or to the branch personnel command for records that are not yet archival.

The rule changed twice, and each change left a date boundary behind that a request still has to clear. Until the 1990s the branches retired the health record to the National Personnel Records Center along with the personnel file. In 1992 the Army began retiring health records to VA instead, and over the next six years the other branches followed. In 2014 that practice stopped too, and each branch took its own records back.

The National Archives publishes the split by branch and date. Army separations from 10/16/1992 through 12/31/2013 went to the VA Records Management Center, and on or after 01/01/2014 they go to the AMEDD Record Processing Center. Navy from 01/31/1994 and Marine Corps from 05/01/1994, both through 12/31/2013, went to the VA Records Management Center, with 2014 onward going to BUMED Navy Medicine Records Activity. Air Force and Space Force from 05/01/1994 through 12/31/2013 went to the VA Records Management Center, with 2014 onward going to the AF STR Processing Center. Coast Guard ran 04/01/1998 through 09/30/2014 to the VA Records Management Center, then on or after 10/01/2014 to USCG HSWL SC Medical Administration. One more row sits below the branch lines, and Guard and Reserve readers need it: the National Archives gives the Air Force Reserve and National Guard a row of its own, where a discharge or retirement from the Reserves or National Guard between 06/01/1994 and 12/31/2013 went to the VA Records Management Center, and 01/01/2014 onward goes to the AF STR Processing Center. That start date sits a month after the active-duty Air Force line, which is enough of a gap to send a Guard request to the wrong building. Anything earlier than those windows is at the National Personnel Records Center.

One line from the National Archives is worth reading before you send anything: "Veterans who plan to file a claim for medical benefits with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) do not need to request a copy of their military health records from NPRC." VA says the same thing about the separation document: if you are submitting an application for VA benefits, VA requests your DD214 when it receives the application. Getting your own copy is still how you find out what the file actually says, but it is not a step you have to complete before filing.

Standard Form (SF) 180, Request Pertaining to Military Records, covers most of it. It goes to the National Personnel Records Center, 1 Archives Drive, St. Louis, MO 63138, or by fax to 314-801-9195. Check the free online route first: the National Archives runs eVetRecs, which takes the same request without paper. VA points recent separations to milConnect on the Department of Defense side instead. The free template builder at The Full File Request Templates fills SF-180 and the health-record forms below from the same details, one time, and shows where each finished letter is mailed.

For a discharge less than 62 years ago the National Archives states there is generally no charge for basic military personnel and medical record information provided to veterans, next of kin and authorized representatives, and that one date is what the whole cost question turns on. Records from a discharge more than 62 years ago are archival and carry a fee, most commonly a $70 flat rate for an Official Military Personnel File. The same page adds a sentence veterans should read twice: "Some companies advertise DD Form 214 research services and will charge a fee for obtaining copies. This is provided as a free service by the National Archives and Records Administration."

Correcting a record is a separate application on a separate form. DD Form 149, Application for Correction of Military Record Under the Provisions of Title 10, U.S. Code, Section 1552, goes to the correction board for your branch. It is a Department of Defense form rather than a VA form, so VA's forms library is the wrong place to look for it, and a veteran who searches va.gov and comes up empty has learned something about the search rather than about the form. Federal law at 10 U.S.C. 1552 sets a three-year window running from when you discovered the error or injustice, and lets a board excuse a late filing in the interest of justice.

For your own VA health records, start with no form at all. VA publishes the record inside the My HealtheVet experience on VA.gov, where you find, review, print and download it yourself. If you do need paper, VA Form 10-5345a, Individuals' Request for a Copy of Their Own Health Information, revised July 2021, is the request for a copy of your own record. VA Form 10-5345, Request for and Authorization to Release Health Information, revised May 2026, is the other one: it authorizes VA to share your health information with a non-VA individual or organization. The numbers are one letter apart and the uses are opposite, which is exactly how veterans end up filing the wrong one.

For records from a private provider there is no single mandatory federal form. The right of access lives in the HIPAA privacy rule at 45 CFR 164.524, which lets a provider require requests in writing as long as it tells patients that. The same section sets the timing at 30 days from receipt with one extension of no more than 30 days, and limits charges to a reasonable, cost-based amount covering only labor for copying, supplies, postage where you asked for mailing, and preparing a summary if you agreed to one. That list is closed. Time spent searching for and retrieving your chart is not on it.

VA Form 20-10206, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or Privacy Act (PA) Request, is broader than its reputation. It is not only the C-file form. Item 17 of the form is a set of checkboxes reading CLAIMS FILE (C-FILE), SERVICE TREATMENT RECORDS / MILITARY TREATMENT RECORDS, DD FORM 214, DISABILITY EXAMINATIONS (C & P EXAMS), PENSION BENEFIT DOCUMENTS, OFFICIAL MILITARY PERSONNEL FILE (OMPF), and OTHER. One form, six boxes, one envelope to the Evidence Intake Center, PO Box 4444, Janesville, WI 53547-4444, or a toll-free fax to (844) 531-7818. VA also publishes an online version, so the paper is optional. On price, the form states that ordinary requesters are charged for photocopying only after the first 100 pages, and that "VA charges $0.15 per single-sided page for photocopying." What that file actually contains, and what to read first when it lands, is a large enough subject that this library gives it a separate page.

VA health records download from a VA.gov account through My HealtheVet, and that is the first of three routes worth trying before anybody fills out a form. Recent separations can often pull personnel documents, sometimes including the DD Form 214, through milConnect, which runs the Defense Personnel Records Information system; whether yours is there depends on when your branch finished scanning its files into the repository. A DPRIS response has to be retrieved within 10 days or the system purges it automatically, so watch for the email.

The third route is not a download. A VA-accredited representative, or a representative of a recognized Veterans Service Organization, can read your eFolder directly once you appoint them, with no separate records request at all. Representation through a recognized VSO is free, and VA publishes a searchable directory of every accredited representative and VSO. For most veterans that is the fastest way anyone gets eyes on the claims file, which is why it belongs at the top of the list rather than the bottom.

First, read what arrived against what you asked for. A short response is often a right-office, wrong-scope problem: the request named one document or one date range, and that is what came back. Naming the complete file produces the complete file.

If the personnel record was destroyed, that is a specific historical event rather than a mystery. A 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center destroyed roughly 16 to 18 million Official Military Personnel Files, with about 80 percent lost for Army personnel discharged between November 1, 1912 and January 1, 1960, and about 75 percent for Air Force personnel discharged between September 25, 1947 and January 1, 1964 whose surnames fall alphabetically after Hubbard, James E. No duplicate copies were ever maintained and no microfilm was produced. What the National Archives does instead is rebuild basic service information from alternate sources, among them VA claims files, state records, pay vouchers from the Adjutant General's Office, Selective Service registrations, government pay records, and medical records from military hospitals.

If the record is not missing but wrong, the fix is the correction board rather than the archive. The National Archives notes that under Department of Defense guidance in DODI 1336.01 it no longer creates a DD Form 215 to correct a DD-214, and it sends corrections to the branch review board or branch personnel command. And when a private provider simply does not respond, 45 CFR 164.524 is the section to quote back at them: 30 days, one extension of up to 30 more, and that extension counts only if they sent a written statement of the reasons for the delay and the date they will finish.