Do Your Treatment Records Survive to the Next Visit?

TL;DR: Korean law requires medical charts to be kept for 10 years, but the diagnostic photos and device settings used in cosmetic procedures such as lifting or skin boosters are not on that legally mandated list. Whether they help you at your next visit depends on what a clinic chooses to keep and whether staff actually pull those records back up during your follow-up consultation. At our Gangnam clinic, the same director carries a patient from diagnosis through recovery, and past session photos and treatment parameters are reopened at every return visit for comparison against your current skin.

When a returning patient asks us whether their records are "still there," we start by separating two different questions: whether a record exists, and whether anyone reopens it. A chart with a one-line procedure name typed in is not the same consultation as one where last session's photos and settings are on screen next to today's skin.

What Korean Law Actually Requires Clinics to Keep

The Ministry of Health and Welfare's Enforcement Rule of the Medical Service Act, Article 15, sets specific retention periods. Medical charts and surgical records must be kept for 10 years. Patient registers, test details and findings, and radiographic images together with their reports must each be kept for 5 years. Courts have read this list as a closed set rather than an open example, so nothing outside it carries the same legal guarantee. A Seoul administrative court made that boundary concrete in a 2010 ruling on Case No. 2009Guhap28766, finding that ultrasound images did not qualify as "radiographic images" under the rule.

The diagnostic photos and device readings used in lifting or skin booster consultations, energy level, injection depth, and similar settings, sit outside this mandated list for the same reason. Whether a clinic keeps them, and for how long, is a matter of internal policy rather than statute.

What You Can Request for Yourself

Article 21 of the Medical Service Act gives patients the right to inspect or copy their own records, and a clinic cannot refuse that request without a justified reason. Ministry of Health and Welfare guidance on record access adds a practical detail: once a record copy already exists, it can be issued without needing separate approval from the treating physician each time, and a patient can ask for it to be sent directly to a third party. If you will need to explain your treatment history to a doctor back home, requesting a copy before you leave Korea is worth doing while you are still on site.

Three Things Worth Confirming Before Your Next Visit

• Whether this session's diagnostic photos and device settings, energy level, shot count, and injection depth and volume, are being saved as part of your record.
• Whether the clinic actually reopens your previous session's record during the follow-up consultation and compares it against your current condition, rather than relying on memory or a procedure name alone.
• Whether the content of an interpreted consultation gets reflected into the Korean-language record, so the detail isn't lost between languages.

How We Handle This at Our Gangnam Clinic

The same director carries a patient through diagnosis, treatment design, the procedure itself, and recovery guidance, which keeps one physician accountable for the full arc rather than handing continuity to whoever happens to be on shift. Because our clinic sits inside the UH FLAT SIGNATURE Gangnam hotel building, we can also check on recovery progress within the same visit for patients staying nearby, a detail we've written about separately for anyone weighing a short trip to Seoul. Japanese, Chinese, and English interpreters are on-site, so a consultation conducted through interpretation is written back into the same record other staff will use at your next visit.

None of this changes what the law requires. It changes what happens with the parts the law leaves up to us, which is usually the part patients actually notice when they come back.

FAQ

If I don't return for a few years, will my record still be there?

Medical charts fall under the 10-year retention rule, so the core record should still exist. Items outside that legal list, like diagnostic photos, follow whatever policy the clinic sets, and policies vary. Tell us the approximate date of your last visit when you book, and we can confirm what's on file before you arrive.

What do I need to request a copy of my own records?

If you're requesting your own record, valid photo identification is generally sufficient. If someone is requesting on your behalf, they will need your signed consent form, a power of attorney, and identification documents for both you and the representative.

Can a follow-up consultation still work if I only remember the procedure name, without photos?

It can, but the treatment plan will be less precise without them. Bringing notes on the device name, roughly when you had it done, the area treated, and how your recovery went gives us something concrete to work from even without the original images.