Medical Records Translation

Prism Language Solutions translates medical records into and out of English: vaccination cards and clinic records for the USCIS I-693 examination, discharge summaries and imaging reports for a second opinion, treatment records for an insurance claim, and clinical files for injury and malpractice litigation. The work goes to translators who specialize in medicine, the translation is certified where a receiving body needs it, and hospitals and insurers get a signed HIPAA business associate agreement before any record is sent.

Last reviewed September 11, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

• Certified translations prepared to meet USCIS requirements
• Human linguists only, matched to the subject
• Fixed written quote within 60 minutes in business hours
• One office in New York, linguists in every state

Vaccination Record Translation for Form I-693

USCIS tells applicants to take any written vaccination documentation they have to the civil surgeon, who reviews it at the immigration medical examination and completes the vaccination record on Form I-693. A card from a Mexican clinic, a Chinese vaccination booklet or a school health record from Lagos is only useful if the civil surgeon can read it, and any foreign-language document that goes into the USCIS file needs a full English translation with the translator’s signed certification under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3).

The translation has to be exact about three things: the vaccine (a trade name in one country is a different antigen in another, so we give the antigen, not just the brand), the date of each dose, and the dose number where the record gives it. Handwritten entries are transcribed and flagged where a digit is uncertain rather than guessed. These are certified one- or two-page documents, usually back within 24 hours. See USCIS translation for the certificate format.

Medical Records Translation for a Second Opinion

A family bringing a relative to a US hospital, or sending scans and pathology to a US specialist for review, needs the foreign file in English before the consultation, in a form the physician can read in ten minutes. That means the operative report, pathology, imaging reports and medication list translated in full, with source terminology kept where a US physician would recognize it and converted where they would not (units such as mmol/L to mg/dL are stated, not silently changed). The physician does not usually need a certificate; they need clarity and a translator who knows what a TNM stage is. We translate the records that bear on the consultation first.

Medical Records Translation for Insurance Claims

Travel insurers, health plans and life insurers receive foreign hospital bills, treatment records and death certificates when a policyholder falls ill or dies abroad, and a claim cannot be adjudicated from a Thai or Spanish invoice. Insurers ask for a certified translation of the treatment record and the itemized bill and, for a death claim, of the death certificate and any cause-of-death report. Charges stay in the original currency with the currency named; the adjuster converts. We keep the bill’s line order and translate procedure descriptions literally, so each line can be matched against the policy schedule.

Medical Records Translation for Litigation

Personal injury, workers’ compensation and malpractice cases turn on records, and when the treatment happened abroad or the treating clinic wrote in Spanish, the records come to us through the attorney. Two things distinguish litigation work. First, the translation must be defensible: the translator is named, the Certificate of Translation Accuracy is worded so it can serve as a declaration, and ambiguities in the original are preserved rather than resolved, because deciding what the doctor meant is the expert witness’s job. Second, volume: a file may run to several hundred pages, and we index and quote per word so counsel can choose what to translate in full. Details on legal translation; if a treating physician testifies through an interpreter, the court interpreting team works from the same glossary.

HIPAA and the Business Associate Agreement for Medical Translation

A hospital, clinic or health plan that sends us patient records is a HIPAA covered entity, and under 45 CFR 160.103 a vendor that receives or maintains protected health information on its behalf is a business associate. Before any record is disclosed, the covered entity needs a written contract meeting 45 CFR 164.504(e): it sets the permitted uses of the information, requires safeguards, requires the vendor to report any use or breach outside the contract, binds subcontractors to the same terms, and requires the information to be returned or destroyed at the end. We sign that agreement as standard and bind our translators to the same restrictions.

Providers have a second obligation: under the Section 1557 rule at 45 CFR 92.201, a covered entity that needs translation in its health programs must use a qualified translator, and machine translation of material that affects a patient’s rights or benefits, or that is technical, must be reviewed by a qualified human translator. Patient-facing material is on the medical translation page; the healthcare page covers the compliance picture.

Medical Translators, Medical Terminology and Handwritten Records

Medical Records Translation Cost

A vaccination card or a one-page clinic letter is priced per page; as a guide, certified translation of short documents in the US market starts at around $24.95 per page. Longer records are priced per source word in the specialist band, roughly $0.14 to $0.20 per word as a guide, because the translators cost more. Illegible or handwritten pages are quoted after we have looked at them. Certification is included; notarization, where an insurer or foreign hospital asks, is itemized; see the pricing page. Send scans through the quote form, or ask for the BAA first if you are a provider, and a fixed price comes back within the hour on business days.

Questions we get asked