How to Request Your VA Medical Records

Sign in on VA.gov and the records are already waiting. VA's page for it is titled Review medical records online, and it describes the tool as the new My HealtheVet experience on VA.gov. VA names what you can pull down: lab and test results, vaccine and allergy records, and care summaries and notes. No form, no fee.

Access is gated on two conditions. You have to be enrolled in VA health care, and you have to be registered as a patient in a VA health facility. Spouses, dependents and survivors get a narrower version limited to medication records, and only if they are enrolled in CHAMPVA and in the Meds by Mail program.

The limit is worth stating as plainly as the tool. VA's page describes what you can find, review, print and download. It does not describe that download as a certified complete copy of your chart. If a specific note, an older imaging report, or a scanned document from outside VA is not showing up, that is where the online route ends and a written request begins.

VA's Privacy Act page is specific about where the request goes. Requests for VHA health records must be submitted by the individual in person, by mail, email or fax, with a signed written request and identification information such as full name and date of birth, to the Release of Information Office at the VA medical facility where the individual receives care. There is no central mailroom for this. It goes to the facility that treated you.

VA Form 10-5345a exists for exactly that request. Its name is Individuals' Request for a Copy of Their Own Health Information, and the current revision is dated July 2021. VA's wording is that the form may be used to submit a written request, which is worth reading closely. The form is a convenience, not a gate. A signed letter that identifies you and identifies the records also fits what VA describes.

A third route runs through My HealtheVet Secure Messaging. Create a new secure message, describe the records you are seeking, include your typed name, and select the My HealtheVet Release of Information Triage Group from the recipient list. A veteran without Secure Messaging can email a scan or a photo of a completed 10-5345a to the VHA Privacy Officer at the facility where they receive care.

No. They are different forms with nearly identical numbers, which is why people file the wrong one. VA Form 10-5345 is titled Request for and Authorization to Release Health Information, revised May 2026. VA says to use it to authorize VA to share your health information with a non-VA, or third-party, individual or organization. It is the form for sending your records to somebody else.

VA Form 10-5345a is the one for your own copy. A single letter separates them on the page, and it separates two different requests: asking for your record, and authorizing a release of your record to a third party.

When records are going to another person or entity, VA routes that through the same facility Release of Information office, in person, by mail, by fax, or through My HealtheVet Secure Messaging, and asks for a signed HIPAA-compliant authorization to come with it. A completed 10-5345 is that authorization.

In most cases, nothing, and the rule that decides it is published. Under 38 CFR 1.577(e), fees charged to an individual for making copies of their own record cannot include the cost of search for and review of the record, and fees under $25.00 are waived. The duplication rate for standard plain paper copies is $0.15 per page after the first 100 one-sided pages or electronic equivalent.

Do the math once and the practical answer falls out. At fifteen cents a page, starting at page 101, a request has to run past roughly 267 pages before the charge reaches the $25.00 waiver line at all. The online download costs nothing in any case.

VA health records are clinical. They are what providers in the VA health system wrote while treating you. The claims file is the agency's own adjudication file: the evidence that actually reached VA on a claim, plus the decisions VA issued. They are separate systems and take separate requests, and the claims file has its own page in this library.

An authorization is a scope document, which means it does two things and only two: it names who receives the information, and it names what information they receive. VA handles third-party releases through the facility Release of Information office and asks that the request carry a signed HIPAA-compliant authorization, which is what VA Form 10-5345 is for.

Two actions sound alike and do different work. Authorizing a release sends health records to a named recipient. Appointing an accredited representative or a VSO on a claim is a different action, with its own form, and what it opens is VA's claims file rather than your health record. Representation through a recognized Veterans Service Organization is free.

VA does not publish a processing target for VA Form 10-5345a or VA Form 10-5345. That is worth saying out loud, because the turnaround numbers that circulate for these requests are not agency numbers. Online access is immediate once you are signed in. A written request to a Release of Information office depends on the facility, the size of the chart, and what is already in that office's queue.

The part you control is when you ask.