Data Portability and Your Baseline: What Happens When You Switch Schools, Teams, or Providers

One of the most frustrating practical challenges in concussion management is baseline data portability — ensuring that an athlete’s baseline testing results follow them when they change schools, switch sports teams, move to a new city, or see a different healthcare provider.

ImPACT Passport ID

ImPACT addresses this better than most platforms through its Passport ID system. Each athlete who takes an ImPACT test (baseline or clinical) receives a unique Passport ID number. Any ImPACT-trained provider worldwide can access the athlete’s testing history using this ID. The data lives in ImPACT’s central cloud platform, not on any individual clinic’s computer. This means a baseline taken at a clinic in California can be retrieved by a physician in New York — or a military installation in Germany.

What doesn’t transfer

But ImPACT cognitive data is only one piece of a comprehensive baseline. What about SCAT6 paper-based assessment results? BESS or mBESS balance scores? VOMS findings? King-Devick times? Symptom inventory data? There is no universal, interoperable standard for storing and transferring multi-domain baseline data across providers and platforms. These records often exist in paper files, individual clinic EMRs, or school athletic training databases that don’t communicate with each other.

Who’s most affected

This gap is especially problematic for: military families who relocate frequently (PCS moves may change the athlete’s school, league, and healthcare system simultaneously), multi-sport athletes who may be baseline tested by different providers for different seasons, and college-bound athletes whose high school baseline data may not transfer to their college athletic program’s system.

Practical recommendations

Keep copies of all baseline results (request printed or digital copies from every provider), maintain a personal health file with your athlete’s baseline data alongside their other medical records, record your ImPACT Passport ID in a secure location, and when transitioning to a new school or team, proactively share baseline data with the new athletic trainer or team physician.

At Headquarters, we provide families with portable digital copies of all baseline data — cognitive, balance, VOMS, and symptom inventory — in a standardized format that can be shared with any healthcare provider. Your baseline data belongs to you, and it should go wherever you go. See also military-to-VA baseline continuity.

Frequently asked questions