Translating Foreign Medical Records for Ukrainian Assessment Teams (former MSEK) and Military Medical Boards

Someone spent two years being treated at a German clinic. Now they need disability status in Ukraine — and what they hold is an Entlassungsbrief, a stack of Arztbriefe, assorted Befunde and imaging. Or another story: a service member is rehabilitating abroad after an injury while a Ukrainian military medical board decides on fitness for service.

Both run into the same question, which almost nobody answers directly: what exactly has to be done to foreign medical paperwork before a Ukrainian board will take it. The two routes are genuinely different, so we will take them separately.

First: MSEK no longer exists

If you researched this earlier and are now confused, here is why. On 1 January 2025 the medical and social expert commissions (MSEK) were abolished. In their place are expert teams assessing a person’s everyday functioning, based at cluster and super-cluster hospitals.

What changed in practice:

• a case is reviewed within 30 calendar days;
• attendance in person is not mandatory — assessment may be remote, on the documents, or at the person’s location;
• former MSEK heads are barred from the new teams.

The name “MSEK” survives in everyday speech, on the referral form and in search queries, so we use both terms below. For paperwork the difference is small: the requirements have not softened.

Route 1: civilian. Disability status while you are abroad

The logic becomes obvious once you see it: the Ukrainian system does not talk to the foreign clinic — it talks to your doctor in Ukraine.

Step 1. Translation. You gather the foreign provider’s records and have them translated into Ukrainian. This is not a preference but an entry condition: the Ministry of Health states plainly that the documents you send must be in Ukrainian.

Step 2. Your doctor in Ukraine. You send the translated records to your family or treating doctor in Ukraine, by post or electronic means. On that basis the doctor issues the assessment referral (form 088/o).

Step 3. The hospital review board. The board considers the file and, where signs of disability are present, refers the case onward.

Step 4. The assessment team. The assessment takes place — and for people abroad it can be conducted in absentia.

The planning takeaway: the bottleneck is not the board but your doctor in Ukraine. They cannot issue a referral until they understand the case history, and they can only understand it from a Ukrainian text. So translation is not the last step before filing — it is the very first step.

Route 2: military. Remote assessment during treatment abroad

Service members being treated outside Ukraine follow a separate government-approved procedure for remote military medical assessment. It removes the need to interrupt treatment and travel back for an examination.

How it works: the service member or their representative submits certified and translated into Ukrainian medical documents from the foreign healthcare provider to the unit commander (or an authorised person). The unit forwards the documents with a referral to the board, which reviews the materials within ten days and rules on fitness or unfitness for service.

What the file usually contains:

Document	What the board needs it for
Referral paperwork for treatment abroad	establishes that the treatment route was proper
Extracts from inpatient records	the primary evidence of the course of treatment
Specialist consultation reports	assessment by discipline
Results of additional investigations	objective data (imaging, laboratory, functional tests)
Statement of the circumstances of injury	links the injury to service
Foreign provider’s medical documents	certified copies with Ukrainian translation
Military registration documents	identity and status

Two things most often derail the timeline. First, the diagnosis must be stated under ICD-10 or ICD-11 — the board works with the classification. Second, the government approved a list of conditions for which remote assessment is available at all (among them malignant neoplasms, eye disorders, head and neck injuries, spinal and spinal cord injuries, nerve and internal organ damage, limb injuries, thermal and chemical burns). If your case is outside the list, a different route applies — a question for the commander and the board, not for a translation agency.

One more practical point: those who complete a remote assessment abroad are not re-examined on returning to Ukraine.

The ICD code: the most important line on the page

A Ukrainian board reasons in codes, not in descriptive prose. So the line carrying the ICD code has to come through the translation exactly and unchanged.

Good news: German and Polish documents usually carry the ICD-10 code already — German Arztbrief and Entlassungsbrief almost always list diagnoses with codes, and so does the Polish karta informacyjna leczenia szpitalnego. In that case the translator simply carries the code across and does not “improve” the wording of the diagnosis.

Bad news: if there is no code, it cannot be invented. Assigning a diagnosis to a classification heading is a medical decision, not a translation one. If your records carry no code, the right move is to ask the foreign clinic to add it, or to issue a short certificate stating it, while you still have contact with them. A few minutes on the clinic’s side saves a month on the board’s side.

What to translate (and what not to)

A case history accumulated over years of treatment can weigh a kilogram. Translating all of it is expensive and pointless. What is usually needed:

• the hospital discharge summary or epicrisis (Entlassungsbrief, wypis ze szpitala, discharge summary);
• specialist reports (Arztbrief, konsultacja specjalistyczna);
• investigation results: CT/MRI reports, histology, laboratory panels;
• operation reports (OP-Bericht, opis zabiegu) where surgery took place;
• injury documentation on the military route.

Most often not needed: day-by-day observation notes, duplicate copies of the same labs, administrative correspondence, invoices and insurance forms (unless the matter is an insurance one). Ask the referring doctor what they actually need and send us only that.

A note on imaging: the report and the images are different things. What gets translated is the written report (Befund, opis badania); DICOM files and films are passed on as they are.

Two details that trip people up

Units of measurement. Laboratory results in European documents are often given in SI units, while Ukrainian clinicians are used to others. We keep the original units and reference ranges beside each result, exactly as they appear in the document. Converting values “for convenience” is not the translator’s call — it would alter medical data.

Drug names. Brand names differ between countries, and a Ukrainian doctor may not recognise the product. The working solution is to keep the brand name from the original and give the active substance (INN) where the document states it. We do the same in the opposite direction — see our guide to medical records translation for treatment abroad.

Common mistakes

1. Sending the doctor documents in a foreign language. No referral can be issued from them.
2. Translating the entire case history “just in case”. A kilogram of paper instead of the list that is actually needed.
3. Losing the ICD code or replacing it with a description. The board works with the classification.
4. Ordering an apostille on a clinic discharge summary. Usually neither required nor possible — it is not a state authority’s document.
5. An agency stamp where the board asked for a certified translation. Ask before ordering, not after.
6. Translating the imaging report but omitting the operation report. The board assesses the extent of intervention.
7. A surname spelled differently in the foreign records and in the Ukrainian passport. To the board those are two people — send a passport scan with the medical file.

How we handle it

Medical texts here are handled by translators who work in medical translation constantly: they know the ICD code and the lab units matter more than an elegant sentence. Translation runs from UAH 300 per standard page from English, from UAH 450 from German, from UAH 430 from Polish, plus 10% for medical subject matter; notarial certification is UAH 400 per document. Certificates and standard forms are covered separately on the medical certificate translation page.

Send the scans and tell us what the file is for — your family doctor, an assessment team, or a military medical board. We will tell you which certification your case needs and quote the price and turnaround within 15 minutes. If the file also contains foreign civil certificates or state authority documents, see our guide to foreign birth and marriage certificates in Ukraine.