Checking Your Laboratory Results

Lab tests can detect problems that affect your mental and physical health and the effectiveness of treatments. Are you up to date? Any potential issues? Time to repeat? Here are three ways to find your own lab results.

1. Ask your doctor

Your primary care provider (family doctor, nurse practitioner) can provide you with copies of your lab reports. Some may also have “patient portals” allowing you to look them up online after registering.

Clinic-based electronic medical records (EMRs) usually only contain lab reports for tests ordered by practitioners in the clinic or copied to them (“cc”ed). These are automatically “pushed” to clinic EMRs.

Some (but not all) can access a central database of most (but not all) test results. However, this is not automatic. It must be done explicitly by the practitioner, and can be slow and cumbersome. So if you ask for copies of “all your labs” it's likely they will give you what is already in their EMR (what they ordered or were cc'ed on) but not other tests.

2. Health Gateway from the Government of BC

This central service contains a broader range of lab results, as well as other medical records, medications, vaccinations, visits with doctors. It requires you to obtain and then use the digital BC Services Card app to securely identify yourself.
MORE → https://www.healthgateway.gov.bc.ca

You can access a broader range of health records (though again, not all) using Health Gateway than via most other means.

Some but not all health authorities (currently, Island Health, Interior Health, Northern Health) also provide (separate) patient portals allowing you to obtain lab results as well as limited other services, e.g., managing some appointments at health authority facilities.

3. MyCareCompass by LifeLabs

This private lab company allows you, once registered, to lookup results for tests done in their patient service centers and some additional locations, e.g. some hospitals.
MORE → https://mycarecompass.lifelabs.com

You will only be able to obtain results for tests done after you've registered with their service. Very few results are available for non-LifeLabs services.

Bottom Line: Patient (and provider!) access to lab results is fragmented, particularly if you change doctors, move, and especially if you don't receive all your health care in BC. Patients are constantly surprised to know there is no single, universal medical record!

Consider keeping your own file (paper or electronic) of your medical records. You should be conscious of privacy and security risks in doing so.

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