An animal's treatment documentation does not belong to the program it was typed into or the drawer it lies in — the owner is entitled to receive it. In practice it helps to separate two things: what must be handed over and what may stay internal.
What the owner is entitled to
The medical documentation handed to the owner includes in particular:
- diagnoses and the course of visits,
- drugs used, with doses,
- test results,
- vaccinations and prevention,
- recommendations.
What stays at the clinic
Purchase prices and margins, billing, the team's internal notes (for instance that a patient can be aggressive), templates, the rota and HR data remain the clinic's internal matter. Handing over medical records does not mean opening the clinic's books.
How it works today — and how it can work
The standard scenario: the owner calls, someone drops their work, prints or scans the history, part of it gets lost on the way, and the next vet still receives an incomplete stack of paper. VetiCloud works differently: the patient record is shared across clinics using the system, and the owner consents once — the new clinic sees the complete history immediately, no printouts, no retyping. The owner also has their own view of the documentation in the mobile app.
The best records-release procedure is the one you never have to run — because the documentation is available where it is needed, with the owner's consent.
How the shared record works — and the limits of what other clinics see — is described on the Electronic patient record page.