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Treat DD Form 2138 as Department-level, which changes how you look for it. Title: DD Form 2138, Request for Transfer of Outpatient Record, January 1978.. Function: Request for Transfer of Outpatient Records. Because the number carries DD rather than a service prefix, the same edition covers all military departments and the defense agencies at once. Nobody issues a Navy copy or an Air Force copy.
not stated is the prescribing publication and not stated the office responsible for the document. Deadlines belong to local implementing guidance, not to either of those, so a submission date is a question for the receiving office.
Use not stated, status not stated. Older printings circulate widely and lose their currency Department-wide the moment a new edition issues.
Formats: PDF. Length 1 pages, approximately 17 entries. Pick on the basis of how you will complete it.
Default to fillable pdf, print only when you must. The fillable file stores what you type; the printable file is a blank picture. A Department form often travels further than a service form — scanned, emailed, forwarded to an agency that never saw the original — and typed text is what survives that.
Skip xfdl unless the viewer is already installed. It is the IBM Lotus Forms format, adopted Department-wide for electronic forms and still present in the set for that reason; ordinary pdf software reports it as unreadable.
All formats are free. One operational note: save the file locally and open it in a desktop reader. Browser-embedded viewers drop field properties and lose typed data without warning.
What the form asks for
- Part 3 - Requesting Facility. From (Complete mailing address of requesting facility).
- Date.
- Sponsor name (last, first, middle initial).
- Part 3 - Requesting Facility. From (Complete mailing address of requesting facility).
- Date.
- Press this reset button to clear the data from all fields
- Print name (last, first, middle initial) and relationship to sponsor (family prefix code). Embossed patient's card may be used.
- Part 2 - Sponsor information. Grade.
- Sponsor name (last, first, middle initial).
- Department.
- Social Security Number. Include dashes.
- Requester (Signature, grade and title).
- Print name (last, first, middle initial) and relationship to sponsor (family prefix code). Embossed patient's card may be used.
- Part 2 - Sponsor information. Grade.
- Department.
- Social Security Number. Include dashes.
- Requester (Signature, grade and title).
Edition check comes first, ahead of any entry. Compare the printed date to not stated and replace anything older. Department-level supersession is simultaneous across the services, so a superseded blank is not merely out of date locally; the office receiving it is already working from the new field structure whichever branch it belongs to.
Field-level questions go to the printed instructions, then to not stated, which is authoritative.
Route it where not stated or local procedure directs, and keep a copy first. On a Department form the receiving office is frequently outside your own chain — another service, a defense agency, a joint command — which makes recovering a lost original slower than it would be internally.
Related forms are found by number alone. The DD sequence is one unified Department-wide series, so a cited number resolves to exactly one document with no branch qualifier needed.
Do not read across from a service number. DA numbering is Army-specific under an Army proponent; DD numbering is Department-wide under not stated or an equivalent Department office. The sequences are unrelated, so identical digits in each identify two different documents. Read the prefix, not the digits.
Editions change when the prescribing directive is reissued, when the data collected changes, or when notice language is amended. None of that reaches you. Checking not stated at download is the entire defence, and it is cheaper than repeating a submission.
Limits of this page: it distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes it. No legal advice, no procedural ruling, no statement about whether any submission will be accepted. Applicability, eligibility and procedure belong to not stated, to a servicing personnel office, or to the office named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2138?
- DD Form 2138, Request for Transfer of Outpatient Record, January 1978.
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?