IMPORTANT NOTICE: The following ‘SPECIAL NOTICE TO VETERINARIANS’ was recently posted by the State Board of Veterinary Medicine.
In July 2007, the Board of Veterinary Medicine amended its regulation related to recordkeeping to specifically address the records that must be kept by a veterinarian participating in a public health or animal health vaccination clinic. The minimum required veterinary medical record must include an identification of the client and patient, the vaccine lot number, and the date and dosage administered. In contrast to the record required for a vaccination clinic, the veterinary medical record for a patient with which the veterinarian has established a valid veterinarian client patient relationship must reflect the complete evaluation and treatment of the patient.
The Board has received a number of complaints regarding animal health vaccination clinics at which, in addition to providing animal health vaccinations, veterinarians or those under the veterinarian’s supervision are administering, prescribing, or dispensing drugs such as flea/tick treatments and heartworm preventative drugs. In order to administer, prescribe, or dispense any treatment, biologic, or drug other that an animal health vaccination, a veterinarian is required to establish a valid veterinarian-client-patient relationship and create and maintain complete veterinary medical records on the patient. Establishing a valid veterinarian-client-patient relationship requires and appropriate, complete physical examination and history of the animal, and recording the findings related to function of all body systems in the patient’s
veterinary medical record, as set forth in the Board’s recordkeeping regulation, 49 Pa. Code §31.221.
The Board’s mission is to protect the public, which includes ensuring that consumers understand the services they choose for their animals.
1 The parameters of an “appropriate” examination may depend on the circumstance under which the veterinarian is seeing the animal. By way of example, a veterinarian is not required to examine the ears of an HBC animal brought to the veterinarian suffering from profuse bleeding in order to commence treatment, including administering drugs.
