Yes, hospitals keep medical records from births, and in most states they’re required to hold onto records for minors significantly longer than adult records. How long depends on your state, but you can generally expect a hospital to retain your birth records for at least 20 to 28 years, and often longer. These are separate from your official birth certificate, which is filed with the state.
How Long Hospitals Must Keep Birth Records
While the federal baseline for medical record retention is 7 years from the date of service, nearly every state extends that requirement for minors. The general pattern: hospitals must keep a child’s records until they reach a certain age (often 21, 25, or 28), or for a set number of years after discharge, whichever is longer. Here’s what that looks like in practice across several states:
- Until age 21 plus additional years: Many states, including New York, Texas, and others, require hospitals to keep minors’ records for 10 years after discharge or until the patient turns 21, whichever is longer.
- Until age 25: States like Colorado and Illinois require retention of minors’ records until the patient turns 25, or for 7 years after the last treatment, whichever comes later.
- Until age 28: Some states push this even further. Complete hospital records for minors in certain jurisdictions must be retained for the period of minority plus 7 years, up to 28 years total.
These are minimums. Many hospitals keep records well beyond what’s legally required, especially large health systems that have digitized their archives. If you were born at a major hospital that’s still operating, there’s a reasonable chance your records still exist even if you’re in your 30s or 40s. But there’s no guarantee once you’re past your state’s retention window.
Birth Records vs. Birth Certificates
Your hospital birth record and your birth certificate are two different documents. The hospital birth record is a medical file: it includes clinical details about the delivery, your mother’s health information, your birth weight, time of birth, and any complications or procedures. It’s maintained by the hospital like any other patient record.
Your birth certificate is a legal document filed with your state’s vital records office. The hospital typically submits the initial registration data to the state shortly after birth, and the state issues the official certificate. If you need a birth certificate for identification purposes (passports, driver’s licenses), you request it from your state’s Department of Health or vital records office, not the hospital. If you need the clinical details of what happened during the birth itself, that’s what the hospital record contains.
In some cases, the two documents work together. States like Maryland allow a hospital record or a notarized letter from the hospital’s medical records director to serve as supporting documentation when correcting information on a birth certificate.
How to Request Your Birth Records
Hospital birth records are accessed through the facility’s Health Information Management (HIM) department, sometimes still called Medical Records. Most hospitals offer several ways to submit a request: online through a patient portal, in person, by mail, or by fax. You’ll need to complete an authorization form to release health information, and you should have a photo ID ready.
Who can request the records depends on the situation. If the patient is under 18, a parent can sign the release. If you’re an adult requesting your own birth records, you sign for yourself. A spouse cannot sign on your behalf. Federal privacy law defers to state law on who qualifies as a “personal representative” authorized to access someone else’s records, so the specifics vary by state.
Hospitals can charge fees for copying records. In California, for example, providers can charge 25 cents per page plus a clerical fee. Most states cap what hospitals can charge, but the exact limits differ. Expect to pay somewhere between $10 and $50 for a straightforward records request, though complex or lengthy files can cost more.
Processing times vary. Some hospitals with online portals can deliver digital copies within a few days. Paper requests sent by mail typically take two to four weeks.
What If the Hospital Closed or Merged
This is where things get tricky. If the hospital where you were born has closed, your records didn’t necessarily disappear. When a hospital or practice closes, it’s expected to notify patients and arrange for a custodian to store the records. That custodian might be another hospital that absorbed the facility, a medical records storage company, or in some cases a state health department.
If you’re trying to track down records from a closed facility, start with these steps:
- Check if the hospital merged: Many “closed” hospitals were actually acquired by larger health systems. The successor organization often holds the old records. A web search for the hospital’s name will usually reveal if it was absorbed by another system.
- Contact the state health department: Your state’s Department of Health may know who was appointed as records custodian when the facility closed.
- Try local resources: Your local chamber of commerce, borough hall, or county health office may have information about where records were transferred.
- Visit the old location: If another medical practice now operates at the same address, staff there may know where the previous facility’s records ended up.
Even with a custodian arrangement, your right to access copies of your records under federal privacy law still applies, as long as the records haven’t passed the state’s required retention period. The challenge is simply finding where they’re stored. For births that happened more than 30 years ago at facilities that no longer exist, the records may genuinely be gone. In those cases, your state vital records office and your birth certificate may be the only documentation that remains.