Getting Blood Test Results After a Kansas DUI Arrest

Attorney Answer

Go to the hospital's medical records department first, not the police department. If the nurse drew and tested your blood as part of a hospital encounter, that record is yours to request as a patient — and that is a far faster route than waiting on a police department that is not answering the phone.

There are two different records here and people constantly conflate them. One is the hospital's own chart for your visit, which you request directly from the hospital as the patient. The other is any specimen sent out for law-enforcement testing, whose report goes to the prosecutor. Those are obtained in completely different ways.

For the law-enforcement result, the mechanism is K.S.A. 22-3212(a)(2): on request, the prosecuting attorney shall permit the defense to inspect and copy the results or reports of physical or mental examinations and of scientific tests or experiments made in connection with the particular case, where their existence is known or by due diligence could become known to the prosecutor. The statute is reciprocal in nature and provides for supplementation, and for sanctions — exclusion, a continuance, or another just order — if the State does not produce. But it is a right that belongs to the defense in a filed criminal case. If no charges have actually been filed against you, there is no case in which to invoke it, and that may well be why five months have gone by with nothing.

One correction on your other question, because this is an area where Kansas law changed and the older rule is still widely repeated. You describe the stop as profiling without cause. That argument does travel on the license side — but not in front of the hearing officer. In Martin v. Kansas Department of Revenue, 285 Kan. 625, 176 P.3d 938 (2008), overruled on other grounds by City of Atwood v. Pianalto, 301 Kan. 1008, 350 P.3d 1048 (2015), the Kansas Supreme Court held that the issues an administrative hearing officer may consider are limited to those listed in K.S.A. 8-1020(h), which do not include the legality of the stop, and that the exclusionary rule was not available to that driver in that proceeding. That is still true of the administrative hearing itself. But in 2016 the Legislature amended K.S.A. 8-1020(p), and in Jarvis v. Kansas Department of Revenue, 312 Kan. 156 (2020), the Kansas Supreme Court held that on a petition for review — a trial de novo in district court — the court may consider and determine any constitutional issue, including the lawfulness of the law enforcement encounter, and may set the suspension aside if the driver proves the encounter was unlawful. The court must consider it if the driver raises it in the petition. Jarvis won on exactly that ground: the district court found the officer lacked reasonable suspicion for the stop and set the suspension aside, and the Supreme Court affirmed.

The practical consequence is a deadline rather than a dead end. Losing the stop argument at the administrative hearing is expected — the hearing officer has no authority to decide it — but the argument has to be carried forward in a petition for review filed within 14 days after the effective date of the suspension order, and the driver carries the burden of proof there. Since you say you received no notice of suspension and no hearing, it appears no administrative case exists against your license yet. If one is ever opened, that 14-day window is the one that matters for a stop challenge.

This is also the moment to understand that a DUI arrest normally generates two separate cases: a criminal case in court, and a license case handled administratively. They use different standards of proof, and they can come out differently on the identical stop. Do not assume that silence on one track means the other is closed.

What you can do

1. Contact the hospital's medical records or health information management department in writing, identify yourself as the patient, give the date of service, and request a complete copy of your record for that visit, including all laboratory results. Ask what identification and form they require. Hospitals must give patients access to their own records; a private hospital is not a government agency you can send a records request to as if it were. 2. Ask the hospital specifically whether the draw was billed to you as a patient encounter or performed at law enforcement's request for a police case — the answer tells you which of the two records above exists. 3. Call the clerk of the district court in the county where the arrest occurred and ask whether any case has been filed against you and, if so, the case number and next date. That single call tells you whether K.S.A. 22-3212 is available to you at all. 4. If a case has been filed, have your lawyer serve a written discovery request on the prosecutor under K.S.A. 22-3212(a)(2) for the results or reports of all scientific tests, and calendar it. If the State does not produce, the statute provides for sanctions. 5. Put your requests to the police department in writing — a dated letter or email creates a record that voicemail does not. 6. Do not file an open-records request for the lab result and expect it to work. Records tied to a criminal investigation are routinely withheld from open-records requests, and medical records of identifiable patients are separately exempt.

⏱ Time limits apply. If a notice of suspension is ever served on you, the window to request the administrative hearing is short — a matter of days, not months — and it runs separately from any criminal case. That hearing is governed by K.S.A. 8-1020, and its issues are narrow. If you lose there and want to challenge the stop, a petition for review must be filed within 14 days after the effective date of the order — that is the step where the stop can actually be decided. You say you never received a notice; if one arrives, treat it as the most urgent piece of paper in the file and act on it the day it comes.