Mount Sinai Fax Numbers for Medical Records

Mount Sinai routes records by hospital, and most sites publish a phone number

Mount Sinai Health System answers the records question with a table of sites. Its instruction is to "Deliver the completed form by mail or in person, where applicable, to the Medical Records Department at the Mount Sinai site where you were treated", and for The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Queens, Beth Israel, Brooklyn, Morningside, West, Union Square, the Blavatnik Family Chelsea Medical Center, the Behavioral Health Center, New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and South Nassau it gives an address and a telephone number for Health Information Management. The patient access form itself, MR-200, prints the same table on its back page. Neither the system page nor the form carries a fax number.

Three sites publish one on their own pages, and those are the rows above. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai gives (212) 353-5782 for its Medical Records Department on its own site and says to fax or mail the signed form there. Mount Sinai West gives (212) 523-8035 for its Release of Information unit on its authorization instruction sheet, alongside three telephone lines. Mount Sinai South Nassau gives (516) 470-6031 and marks it for South Nassau records only.

If you were treated anywhere else in the system, the published destination is the phone number and mailing address for that hospital. Call the number for your site and ask whether Health Information Management will take the form by fax before you send it. Mount Sinai Doctors, the practice network, takes requests through its online request tool rather than by fax.

What Mount Sinai says about fees and ID

Mount Sinai asks for a copy of a state-issued photo ID with every authorization, and a request made in person needs the ID itself. A request for a minor also needs a copy of the birth certificate, and a request signed by someone other than the patient needs a power of attorney, health care proxy, or letter of administration.

Fees are set per site. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary states there is a charge of $.75 per page when the record is copied for the patient, and no fee when it is sent to a doctor. Mount Sinai West states its requests take 7 to 10 business days and charges 12 cents per page, with requests from health care facilities free of charge. Naming the receiving physician on the form is what puts a request in the no-fee category.

What you are likely sending

The paperwork that moves this way is the paperwork that carries a signature:

• The Patient Access Request for Medical Information (form MR-200), when you want your own records
• The Patient Authorization for Release of Medical Information to Third Party (form MR-201), when records go to a new doctor, an attorney, or an insurer
• New York Eye and Ear's own Authorization for Release of Information form, for Infirmary records
• Disability, FMLA, or school and camp forms a Mount Sinai physician has completed and signed
• Records from an outside provider going the other direction, to be added to your Mount Sinai chart

A completed form plus an ID copy runs two to four pages, which is inside the free monthly allowance on every FaxTerra account.

Verify the number before you send

A records request carries your name, date of birth, and often your medical record number. Sending it to the wrong number sends that to a stranger, so confirm the destination first:

• Use the number printed on the Mount Sinai form or letter in front of you. Mount Sinai prints the destination on the form itself, and that beats any general number.
• If you have no form and your site is not in the table, open mountsinai.org/about/medical-records, find your hospital in the site table, and call the Health Information Management number listed there.
• Ask the person who answers to read the fax number back to you, and write down who you spoke with.
• Skip fax numbers from third-party directories. One widely repeated number for Mount Sinai West is a telephone line, not the Release of Information fax that Mount Sinai prints on its own instruction sheet.

How to fax Mount Sinai without a fax machine

Create a free FaxTerra account with an email address. Upload your signed authorization as a PDF or as photos taken with your phone, enter the Mount Sinai fax number for your hospital, and send. A delivery confirmation arrives by email, which is worth keeping because Health Information Management does not acknowledge receipt separately.

Small documents send free within your monthly free pages. Longer packets are covered by a one-time credit pack from about 10¢ a page. For accepted file types and page limits, see how to send a fax. If you are gathering records from several places at once, faxing medical records covers the whole process, and Cleveland Clinic is a useful comparison because it publishes a single regional Health Information Management line instead of routing by hospital.