Every person gets one health story, and one private Family Stork email address every clinic already knows how to use. MyChart is a patient portal — it belongs to the hospital that runs it, shows only that hospital's records, and disappears when you switch providers. Your family's health record should belong to your family.
MyChart works well for one hospital. If your pediatrician, your OB, and your cardiologist are all inside the same hospital system, MyChart shows you everything in one place. That is genuinely useful.
But most families don't live inside one hospital system. Your kids see a pediatrician in one network. Your aging parent sees a cardiologist in another. You had surgery at a hospital that uses a completely different portal. Each system has its own MyChart login, its own records, and its own rules for sharing.
The result: your family's health story is scattered across portals you didn't choose, behind logins you can't remember, and locked inside systems that don't talk to each other. MyChart doesn't solve this. It was never designed to.
MyChart is operated by Epic Systems and licensed to individual hospitals. When your hospital runs MyChart, they control what you see, how long you can access it, and whether your records are available after you leave their system.
Your MyChart account exists because you are a patient at that hospital. When that relationship ends — you move, you switch doctors, the hospital changes systems — your portal access may expire. The records were always the hospital's copy, displayed to you as a convenience.
MyChart shows you what happened inside that hospital system. The visit to the walk-in clinic across town? Not there. The specialist your primary care doctor referred you to at a different hospital? Separate portal, separate login. Each MyChart is a silo.
MyChart's proxy access lets you see a family member's records within that system. But proxy access varies by hospital, often requires in-person enrollment, and applies only to records inside that single system. It doesn't give you a unified view of your child's health across every provider they've ever seen.
A record that belongs to your family stays with your family — across providers, across moves, across decades. It doesn't depend on any one hospital keeping the portal running. It grows with each person from their first checkup through the rest of their life.
Family Stork is built around one idea: every person gets one private email address, and any clinic emails records to it. The pediatrician sends the well-child visit summary. The allergist sends the test results. The hospital sends the discharge papers. Each record lands on the right person's timeline and files itself. No portal to log into. No data to enter. Nothing for the clinic to learn — they already know how to send an email.
Your child's first pediatrician, the urgent care visit at 2 AM, the specialist referral at age three, the school physical at age five — all of it lands on one timeline. When they outgrow the pediatrician, the record doesn't start over. When they turn 18, you hand them a complete health story. How it works for children →
Your mother sees a cardiologist, an internist, a rheumatologist, and an ophthalmologist — each at a different hospital, each with a different portal. You and your siblings need to keep track of medications, discharge papers, and appointment notes across all of them. One email address per parent. Every doctor's records in one place. Every sibling can see what they need to. How it works for caregivers →
Moving? Switching insurance? Getting a second opinion? You need your complete medical history — not the fragment one hospital's portal remembers. Your own @families.familystork.com address keeps every record from every doctor you've ever given it to. How it works for your own record →
Several apps and services try to solve the MyChart fragmentation problem. They approach it differently:
For the full roundup: Best MyChart alternatives for families with multiple doctors (2026) →
The real gap in every MyChart alternative — including KeptWell, OneRecord, and Apple Health — is the collection step. Someone has to get the records from the clinic into the app. With FHIR-based tools, you need the hospital to support the right API. With upload-based tools, you need to download from one portal and upload to another. With Apple Health, you need the provider to be in Apple's network.
Family Stork skips the collection step entirely. Every clinic already has email. Every front-desk worker knows how to send an attachment. You give them the address shown on the person's record. They email the visit summary, the lab results, the discharge papers. The timeline files them. Done.
That's the difference between a portal alternative and a family health record. A portal alternative still makes you do the work. A family health record does the work for you.
For the deep dive on how it works: One private email address — how Family Stork works →
MyChart offers a "Care Everywhere" feature that lets some hospitals share records with each other. In practice, it works inconsistently — not all hospitals participate, and the records displayed are often incomplete. It does not create a unified family record across all providers. For families seeing doctors at three or more hospital systems, MyChart remains fragmented.
Access policies vary by hospital. Some hospitals deactivate your MyChart account after a period of inactivity or when you are no longer a patient. You can usually download records before losing access, but most people don't think to do that until it's too late. With Family Stork, every record sent to the person's email address stays on their timeline permanently — regardless of which hospital sent it or whether you're still a patient there.
No. MyChart is a patient portal provided by your hospital — it lets you message your doctor, schedule appointments, and see results from that system. Family Stork is a family health record — it receives records from every provider and keeps them in one timeline per person. You can use both. Family Stork replaces the need to juggle multiple portals, not the portal itself.
KeptWell focuses on serious-illness care coordination — you upload documents, organize them by condition, and share with a care circle. It's strongest for oncology and complex diagnoses. Family Stork receives records automatically via email from any clinic, covers every family member from birth through aging, and doesn't require the parent or caregiver to upload anything. Detailed comparison →
Yes. Any clinic — whether they use MyChart, Cerner, Athenahealth, or any other system — can email records to your Family Stork address. The clinic doesn't need to install anything, join a network, or support an API. They just send the records by email, the way they already send records to referring doctors, insurance companies, and patients who ask.
Stop juggling portals. Give every family member one private @familystork address. Any clinic sends records to it. The timeline builds itself.
Start your family's record — free