Emailing With Your Vet And The Miracle Of Web-based Medical Records

As a part of her Reasonable Expectations series, Dr. Kay wrote a great post on using email to communicate with your vet. Do check out her article.

By the way, did you get Speaking for Spot yet? I am going to keep bugging you until you do, so you might as well just go and do it. I KNOW you will be glad you did, trust me on that.

Now, back to email communication.

All our vets in the past would allow some degree of email communication. Interestingly, the degree and usefulness of that was a reflection of how well they were willing to communicate in general.

Now, a love-and-hate relationship with the keyboard does not a bad vet make. 

A general distaste for communication altogether, however, does.

If your vet doesn't listen to you when you're trying to explain your dog's symptoms, how is he going to get the right diagnosis?

And if your vet won't discuss the diagnosis and treatment options with you, would do you know that your dog is getting the treatment that is the best for him? In fact, how would you know what the treatment is in the first place? We had vets just do things without saying a word about what they were doing and why!

"Here, give this to your dog twice a day."

"Wait a minute! What is it? What does it do? Why is he taking it? Does it have side effects? What are other options?"

Ever had a vet like that?

I believe that good communication is just as important as a state of the art equipment and diagnostic tools.

Of course, the vet isn't always to blame. Good communication takes two parties, keep that in mind!

Our vet and I use email to communicate all the time. I love it for a number of reasons:

• we both can respond in our own time
• we both can keep track of the conversations and refer to them later without having to remember everything
• we both can do further research before answering

It is important to realize that email communication doesn't work in emergency situations and does not replace the vet physically examining your dog!

But it works great for us for everything else.

• lab results came back? We can discuss what we're looking at and where to go from there.
• started a new treatment? Our vet can be up to date on how well Jasmine is responding to it.
• there is a medical decision to be made? We can discuss our options.

What we discuss? Everything from vaccinations, Jasmine's progress, to new treatment ideas.

Our vet has taken this one step further. He is using web-based medical records system.

I don't know about you, but getting to see lab results or medical records from any of our past vets was like pulling teeth! I never understood why keeping patient records from the client was a matter of national security!

When we were changing vets, they charged us to forward the records to the new vet. That on its own would be reasonable.

But what our new vet got from the previous places was three pages worth of useless scribble!

Consider that in the light of the fact that Jasmine was at the vet's with various issues at least once a month since she was a puppy!

So how could this be? 

Either their patient records were really that bad, or they didn't want anybody to see them. I'm not sure which I would consider worse.

When we started seeing Jasmine's new vet, I thought I died and went to heaven!

I can go online and access all her records any time I want. All of them! All her lab results, diagnoses, treatments, notes and email conversations we had from day one are right there at my fingertips.

What if we went on a trip and there was an emergency?

No problem, I can go into her records online and provide the emergency vet with any information they might need.

How well do you remember everything that was discussed during your vet visit?

We don't have to remember it! Jasmine's vet writes up a summary of each visit, which we can look up any time we need.

The list could go on.

For me, this web-based system became an indispensable tool in managing Jasmine's health care. It is yet another reason we are thankful for our new vet every day.

Related articles:
Veterinarians Are People First
A Word On Second Opinions Finding Dr. Wonderful And Your Mutt's Mayo Clinic: Getting Started
Making Tough Medical Decisions For Your Dog
It's Your Dog's Health
Does Your Vet Listen To You?
Help! My Dog Is Purple!
Veterinary Drive-Thru: Coming Soon To A Veterinary Hospital Near You!