Get a real second opinion and find a clinical trial after a serious diagnosis

This step produces one folder holding the complete pathology report for every biopsy, surgery, and diagnostic procedure so far. The catch: reports live in several places — the patient portal, the release-of-information office, sometimes only on paper — and a report you were told about is easy to confuse with a report you actually hold.

1. Sign in to the hospital’s patient portal (MyChart or the facility’s equivalent) and open the Test Results or Pathology section.
2. For each procedure, download the full report as a PDF — the complete final report with diagnosis, grade, and any biomarker sections, not the one-line summary.
3. For any report missing from the portal, call the release-of-information (medical records) office and ask how to get it: portal, secure message, mail, or fax — and whether a fee applies.
4. Label every report with three facts — specimen source (for example, “left breast core biopsy”), collection date, and facility name — and put them in the file name.
5. Compare the list of your procedures with the reports in hand; each procedure without a report goes on your checklist as missing, not as nonexistent.