travcjohnson Claude for veterinary practices
You already know where the day goes. Discharge instructions nobody follows, an estimate that turns into a decline in the parking lot, a recall list that never gets worked, and referral letters you write at nine at night. This page walks through four of those jobs you can hand to Claude in a browser tab this week, with the exact prompts and the honest limits, and every one of them is built to run on de-identified or template material, because a consumer chat window is not where client and patient records belong.
Set each one up once inside a Claude Project, with this business's own documents in the project knowledge, and the drafts come back in their voice rather than a generic one.
How to use this skill
Ask the person which of the workflows below matches what is on their desk right now. Then walk them through that one only. Give them the prompt in full, tell them exactly which bracketed placeholders to replace, and say how long first-time setup really takes. Do not run all four at once; the point is that one of them is working by the end of the conversation.
Before handing over any prompt, read the limits section at the end and say plainly which parts of their job this should not touch.
1. Write discharge instructions the owner can follow
What happens today. The tech goes over aftercare at the front desk while the dog is pulling toward the door and the owner is digging for a credit card. That night the emergency line rings, because nobody heard the part about the cone staying on to sleep.
What happens instead. You keep one clean page per procedure, written as things the owner physically does at home, with a call us right now list and a call us at our next opening list. The tech hands it over instead of reciting it over a barking waiting room.
First-time setup: about 25 minutes.
You are writing take-home discharge instructions for a veterinary practice. These are general instructions for a procedure type, not advice for any individual patient, and a licensed veterinarian will review and approve them before they are used.
Procedure:
[name it, for example feline spay, canine neuter, mass removal with sutures, dental cleaning with extractions, cystotomy, laceration repair, orthopedic repair]
Species and typical patient:
[for example young adult cats, large breed dogs, brachycephalic dogs, senior dogs. Note any temperament reality that matters, such as animals that will not tolerate handling by the owner]
How we actually do it and what we tell every owner out loud:
[incision closure type and whether sutures dissolve or need removal, cone or surgical suit expectations, activity restriction and for how long, bathing and swimming restrictions, feeding and water on the first night, litter or bedding changes, separation from other pets, what normal looks like in the first 24 to 48 hours, what we consider abnormal]
Our clinic details:
[clinic name, phone, hours, after hours or emergency referral instructions]
Write a one page sheet at a sixth to eighth grade reading level with these sections:
1. What we did today, in everyday words
2. What is normal in the first day or two
3. What you need to do at home, as a numbered step list, written for an animal that does not want you to do it
4. How to keep them from undoing the surgery, covering the cone, confinement, and leash only trips outside
5. Food, water, and medication, with a short note on how to physically give medication to this species
6. Call us right away if you see any of these
7. Call us at our next opening if you see any of these
8. Your recheck and suture removal timing
Rules you must follow. Do not name any drug, dose, frequency, or duration. Wherever a medication, dose, or number belongs, write a clearly bracketed blank for us to fill in, like [medication name] and [amount] and [how often]. Do not diagnose, do not describe complications as likely or unlikely, and do not invent recovery timelines, percentages, or statistics. Use only what I gave you above. At the end, under a heading called Needs the veterinarian, list anything an owner would obviously ask that I did not give you an answer for.
2. Explain an estimate before the client declines care
What happens today. You hand over a written estimate with a low end and a high end, and you watch the owner's face change at the total. They say they need to think about it, and the thinking happens in the parking lot with nothing in their hands but a number.
What happens instead. The owner leaves with a written sheet that says what each line is actually for, what happens if they wait, and what the smaller version of the plan looks like, so the decision is not just yes or no at the counter.
First-time setup: about 25 minutes.
You are helping a veterinary practice explain a written estimate to a pet owner in plain language. The veterinarian has already examined the patient and decided the recommended plan. Do not second-guess it, do not add, remove, or substitute any diagnostic or treatment, and do not suggest any drug, protocol, or alternative of your own. Your job is to explain and organize what I give you.
What we found and what we are trying to answer or fix, de-identified:
[describe it generally, no client name, no patient name, no record number]
The estimate line items, exactly as they appear:
[paste the line items and, if you want dollar figures included, paste those figures too. Use bracketed blanks for any figure you do not want in the draft]
Lower cost options the veterinarian has already approved, if any:
[list them, for example staging the work over two visits, starting with the diagnostic step only, or a monitoring plan with a recheck. If you leave this blank, write nothing in that section]
What happens clinically if this waits, in the veterinarian's own words:
[paste it, factually]
Payment options we actually offer:
[list them, for example third party financing we accept, deposit terms, in-house wellness plan. Leave out anything we do not offer]
Write a one page sheet the front desk can hand over, at a sixth to eighth grade reading level, with these sections:
1. What we found, in everyday words
2. What each line on the estimate is for, one short line per item, saying what it tells us or what it does
3. What we recommend and the order we would do it in
4. If cost is the problem right now, built only from the approved options I listed above
5. What waiting means, stated factually, with no pressure and no guilt
6. How people pay for this here
7. Questions you may want to ask us
Rules you must follow. Never invent a price, a discount, or a payment term. Never state a prognosis, a survival figure, a success rate, or any statistic. Never generate a cheaper clinical alternative on your own, since choosing what care to skip is a veterinary decision. No fear language and no guilt. Anywhere a figure or a date is needed and I did not give it to you, write a bracketed blank. At the end, under a heading called Needs the veterinarian, list anything you could not explain clearly from what I gave you.
3. Build a recall library for vaccines and dentals
What happens today. The overdue list has puppies who never finished the series, cats nobody has seen since the last carrier fight, seniors due for bloodwork, and a long tail of dentals that got declined. Whoever has a free half hour sends the same cheerful reminder to all of them.
What happens instead. You have a small library of messages split by species, life stage, and the reason the client actually stalled, so the owner who is frightened of anesthesia does not get the same text as the puppy who missed one booster.
First-time setup: about 30 minutes.
You are writing recall and reactivation messages for a veterinary practice. These are reusable templates, not messages to a named client, so use merge fields like {ClientFirstName}, {PetName}, {DueService}, and {ClinicPhone} instead of any real client or patient details.
Our practice:
[clinic name, city, the tone you want, and what actually makes you different, such as fear free handling, in-house lab, cat only exam room, extended hours, or a wellness plan]
Write messages for each of these situations:
1. Puppy or kitten who did not finish the vaccine series
2. Annual wellness and vaccines, three to six months overdue, otherwise a regular client
3. More than a year lapsed, still on file, no reason known
4. Senior wellness bloodwork recommended and never scheduled
5. Dental cleaning recommended and declined, where the client said the cost was the problem
6. Dental cleaning recommended and declined, where the client said they are afraid of anesthesia
7. Cat owner who avoids visits because the carrier and the car ride are the hard part
For each situation give me three things: a text message short enough to send as one SMS, an email version with a subject line, and one sentence the front desk can say on the phone.
Rules you must follow. Never make a clinical claim about an individual animal and never say a specific pet is at risk. Never state a health outcome, a lifespan figure, a percentage, or any statistic. Do not name or recommend a specific vaccine, product, protocol, or anesthetic drug. Leave those as bracketed blanks for us. No guilt, no fear language, and nothing that reads like a scare tactic. Do not invent prices, discounts, or deadlines. Leave any price or promotion as a bracketed blank.
For situation 6, the anesthesia one, do not answer the medical question in a text message. Acknowledge the concern plainly, say in general terms that a veterinarian talks through pre-anesthetic evaluation and monitoring with every owner, and offer a phone call with the veterinarian as the next step.
One more thing. When you are done, tell me what you would need from me to make these sound like our clinic rather than a generic reminder service, and what I should put in the project instructions so I do not have to explain our voice again next time.
4. Draft the specialist referral letter in one pass
What happens today. You are sending a dog to internal medicine and the history is spread across eight visits, two lab reports, and a note you dictated at nine at night. Writing it up properly means rereading all of it, so the letter goes out thin and the specialist calls you for the parts you left out.
What happens instead. You paste the de-identified timeline and get back a structured letter with the history, what has been ruled out, what was tried and how the patient responded, and one clear question for the specialist. Plus a short plain language note for the owner.
First-time setup: about 20 minutes.
You are helping a veterinarian prepare a referral to a specialist. Produce two documents. You must not diagnose, must not offer a differential list, must not recommend any diagnostic or treatment, and must not comment on any drug or dose. Your job is to organize and clearly present only the facts I give you.
Use [Patient] and [Client] throughout instead of names. Do not include any record number or contact detail I did not provide.
Who I am referring to and why:
[specialty, for example internal medicine, surgery, oncology, cardiology, neurology, criticalist, and the one thing you want from them]
Signalment and general history, de-identified:
[species, breed, approximate age, sex and reproductive status, relevant lifestyle or housing, and the chronological story of the problem with approximate dates]
Diagnostics performed and results, pasted as-is:
[bloodwork values, imaging findings as the radiologist or you described them, cytology, culture, anything else. Paste the actual wording]
What has been tried and how the patient responded:
[treatments, duration, and response, in your words]
Current medications, exactly as written:
[list them]
What the client already knows, what they have consented to, and any constraint that matters:
[for example cost ceiling, travel distance, unwilling to pursue surgery, other pets at home]
Document one, the referral letter. Use these sections: reason for referral and my specific question; signalment; summary of the presenting problem; chronological history; diagnostics performed with results exactly as I pasted them and no interpretation you added; treatments tried and response; current medications listed exactly as I wrote them with no adjustment and no commentary; what the client knows and has consented to; my specific question again at the end; and a bracketed contact block for our clinic.
Document two, a short note for the owner, at a sixth to eighth grade reading level: why we are sending you to a specialist, what a board certified specialist is, what to bring with you, what usually happens at a first specialty visit, and a bracketed line noting that scheduling and cost come from the specialty hospital rather than from us.
Rules you must follow. Never add a clinical finding, a date, a lab value, or a medication that I did not state. Never state a prognosis, a survival figure, or a statistic. If something is missing that a specialist would clearly need, do not fill it in. List it at the end under a heading called Needs the veterinarian.
What not to use Claude for here
Say these out loud rather than waiting to be asked. Being trusted is worth more than being impressive.
- Clinical diagnosis, drug dosing, and anesthesia protocols. This one is not negotiable. Claude is not a veterinary decision tool, it is not cleared as a medical device, and it will state a wrong number in a confident sentence that reads exactly like a right one. Do not ask it to calculate a dose, convert a concentration, build a constant rate infusion, choose an anesthetic or premed, interpret bloodwork or radiographs, or work up a case. Dosing and anesthesia errors are lethal. Use your formulary, your references, and your own arithmetic, every time.
- Client and patient records in a consumer chat window. HIPAA generally does not apply to veterinary practices, because a clinic is not a HIPAA covered entity, so the rule you are actually following is your state veterinary practice act plus the AVMA Principles of Veterinary Medical Ethics, which treat record information as confidential and released only with client consent or a court order. Anthropic's Business Associate Agreement covers HIPAA-ready services such as Claude Enterprise with HIPAA compliance activated and the first-party API, and Free, Pro, Max, and Team sit outside that coverage anyway. Do not paste practice management exports, client contact or payment details, or full patient records. Work from de-identified summaries and reusable templates.
- Anything clinical reaching a client without a licensed veterinarian reading it first. Discharge sheets, estimate explanations, and referral letters all carry professional liability, and a draft that reads well can still be wrong. Nothing Claude writes establishes or stands in for a veterinarian-client-patient relationship, which under federal and state law has to be built on a veterinarian's own examination before anyone diagnoses or prescribes. Claude never answers a client's medical question directly. The veterinarian approves every word that leaves the building.
Questions this business usually asks
Does HIPAA apply to us, and can I paste records into Claude?
HIPAA generally does not apply to veterinary practices, because a clinic is not a HIPAA covered entity. What binds you is your state practice act, the AVMA ethics rules on confidentiality, and the trust of a client who assumed their file stays in your building. Either way, keep records out of consumer Claude. Free, Pro, Max, and Team are not covered by Anthropic's BAA, which is why every prompt on this page is written to run on de-identified summaries and templates.
Can Claude calculate a dose, or double-check one I already did?
No, and this is the one place to be inflexible. It is not a dosing tool, and it should never be a second set of eyes on your math, because a plausible wrong number looks identical to a right one in fluent prose. Same answer for anesthesia protocols, dilutions, and chemotherapy. Use Claude for the words around the care, never for the numbers inside it.
Do I have to pay for Claude to use any of this?
You can start on the free plan. Anthropic's support documentation says projects are available to all users including free accounts, capped at five projects, which covers one project for client communication and one for referrals. Paid plans start to matter when you are loading a lot of reference material into project knowledge, since enhanced project knowledge with RAG is paid only, or when you hit message limits on a busy afternoon.
Can it help with training new techs and assistants?
That is the best second place to start, because turnover means you re-teach the same things every few months. Put your existing checklists and written protocols into project knowledge with client and patient details stripped, then ask for a day-one sheet, a skills checklist for a specific role, or a phone script for the questions the front desk gets all day. Anything involving restraint, drugs, or anesthesia still has to be written or approved by the credentialed person legally responsible for it, so treat those drafts as a starting outline rather than a protocol.
More
A longer written version of these workflows, plus workflows for other trades, is at https://claudeforbiz.com/claude-for-veterinary-practices . Nothing there is required to use this skill; every prompt above is complete as written.