Do I Have To Give The Insurance Company My Medical Records?

You are not required to give the at-fault driver’s insurance company unlimited access to your entire medical history. There is no law forcing you to sign their broad authorization form just because they asked.

What you generally do need to provide is documentation that proves the injuries from this accident — the diagnoses, treatment, and bills tied to the crash. That is what supports your claim and what a fair settlement is built on.

Handing over everything else simply gives the insurer ammunition. The relevant records help your case; the unrelated ones usually only help theirs.

The blanket authorization is a fishing expedition. Adjusters use it to search for any pre-existing condition — an old back tweak, a prior fender-bender, a years-ago doctor’s note — that they can point to and say your injuries existed before the crash.

Even a minor, unrelated entry in your file can be twisted into an argument that you were already hurt, letting the insurer offer less or deny the claim outright.

It is worth knowing that a pre-existing condition does not actually bar your claim under Georgia law. If a crash worsened a prior condition, you can generally still recover for that aggravation — but insurers count on you not knowing that.

Instead of signing the insurer’s broad form, you (or your attorney) can gather the specific records connected to the accident and send those directly. This gives the insurer what it legitimately needs to evaluate the claim while keeping the rest of your history private.

If an adjuster pushes a sweeping authorization on you, you can decline and offer to provide the relevant records yourself. You are not being uncooperative — you are protecting your privacy and your case.

This is closely related to other early pressure tactics, like the request for a recorded statement after a car accident. In both situations, slowing down and limiting what you give the insurer protects your claim.

Your own insurer is a different situation. When you make a claim under your own UM/UIM or MedPay coverage, your policy’s cooperation clause may give that insurer more contractual rights to your records than the at-fault company has.

Even then, those rights are not unlimited. The records still generally need to relate to the injuries you are claiming, and you can usually push back on requests that reach far beyond the accident.

Because the rules differ between your own insurer and the at-fault insurer, it is smart to understand exactly what each one can ask for before you sign anything.