How to track outstanding medical record requests across your caseload

A paralegal with a full caseload may have dozens of medical records requests open at once, each with a different provider, method and age. The ones that get lost are rarely the ones anyone decided to ignore. They are the ones nobody could see.

This article covers what to track and how to keep it visible. It is general information, not legal advice, and reflects Utah and federal law as of October 2026.

A tracker holds protected health information, so keep it in a system your firm has approved for client data, not a personal file.

What to record for every request

Each request should have a single place where these details live:

• the client and matter
• the provider and the specific department
• the date sent, the date the provider received it, and the method used
• the date range and type of records requested
• any confirmation, tracking number or reference
• the authorization's expiration date, so a re-signed form is scheduled before it lapses
• any fee quoted, whether it was paid, and the invoice or reference number
• the date of the next action
• a log of every contact, with who you spoke to and what they said

If a detail is missing, the request is harder to chase. A call six weeks later goes much better when you can give the records department the date, the method and the reference.

Give every request a status

Keep the statuses few and clear, for example: waiting on authorization fix, sent, follow-up due, escalated, partially received, received. A request should always be in exactly one of them, and moving it should be a deliberate step.

Track the next action, not just the status

"Sent" tells you where a request is. "Status check due on the 15th" tells you what to do. Sort or filter by next action date so each day starts with the requests that are due or overdue.

Track the statutory dates, too

Under Utah's statute, a provider or records vendor is to send copies to a patient's attorney within 30 days of receiving the request, and the fee it may charge drops by half after 30 days and to zero after 60 (Utah Code § 78B-5-618). Those dates run from receipt, so record the receipt date and set reminders for day 30 and day 60. Other states have different rules, and the statute has exceptions, so treat the dates as prompts to check, not guarantees.

Look for the quiet ones

Review the list for requests that have sat in the same status the longest. These are the ones most likely to have been missed by the provider, rejected without notice, or lost between departments.

Make the schedule visible to the team

The most common cause of a stalled request is a deadline that lives in one person's head or spreadsheet. Whatever you use, make sure a colleague can open it and see what is due, so a request does not stall when someone is out.

Spreadsheet or software

A shared spreadsheet works for a small number of requests if everyone updates it the same way. It gets harder as volume grows, because nothing reminds anyone to act and the contact history ends up scattered across email and notes.

DocHound handles this part of medical record request management: it shows the status, the next deadline and the full history of every request in one place, and sends follow-ups and escalation letters as they come due. For an example schedule, see how to follow up on a records request without losing track.

Outside Utah? See medical records request deadlines by state.