In veterinary medicine, we experience animals of all shapes, sizes, and health conditions. While the need to document a death is not the most pleasant of topics, it can be a necessity when dealing with live animals who may react to anesthesia and surgical procedures differently or if an owner elects euthanasia.
In HQ, there are a couple of ways to document these instance and there are two types of deaths recorded in HQ. A death related to service or a courtesy death notice.
Death Related to Service
A death related to service means the patient died before, during or 72 hours after surgery. This death is possibly attributable to surgery and type of death should be recorded in the patient’s medical record. It also goes in your clinic’s mortality report. These also include patient’s that are euthanized per owner’s request. Pets euthanized per owner request do not count toward your mortality statistics in the Mortality Report.
How to Document a Patient Death (Surgery-Patient Flow)
Sometimes, a patient may pass away during clinic pre, intra, or post-operatively. To document a death in patient flow, follow these steps:
- Related to surgery, push the animal through to the surgery tab.
- If the animal did not receive induction, do not give the induction drugs on the surgery screen. If the patient was induced, be sure to ‘give’ the induction drugs on the surgery screen. Giving the induction drugs will be documented and recorded to the patient’s treatment sheet as normal, and it will show proper medical documentation.
In the following example, you can see the patient, Mrs. Dalloway, received her induction drugs meaning that her death occurred either intra or post-operatively. To record a death in patient flow, first click on the Action tab and choose Death:
- Once you click on the Death option, you will be redirected to a popup. Here, you can choose if the patient passed away pre, intra, or post-operatively.
Please Note: Deaths that are recorded in this manner should have occurred within 72 hours of surgery, and these deaths will be recorded in your clinic’s Mortality Rate. - Next, you can choose a Death Cause. The causes noted here are the most common causes of death we have noted through HQ:
- If your clinic or an owner decides to have a necropsy performed, you can enter the results under Necropsy Result.
- We realize that a necropsy can take some time, so there is an option to Edit Death in Patient Flow. To edit the Death Cause once the necropsy results have been returned, go to Patient Flow, change the date to the animal’s appointment date, go to the Surgery Tab, and click on Action > Edit Death.
Please Note: Clinic HQ will not automatically delete the original Death Cause in the internal medical notes if it has been edited:
If a death has occurred post-operatively, Clinic HQ will remove the spay/neuter service. Only successful surgeries are recorded in Clinic HQ with the spayed/neutered tag, and recording an unsuccessful surgery (including animals who have passed away within 72 hours of surgery) will skew appropriate reporting.
Courtesy Death Notice
These types of deaths are instances where the client tells you that their pet has passed away. Usually they mention this in order to stop receiving vaccine reminders. As a courtesy to your client, you can mark their pet as deceased by going to the patient profile and selecting Mark pet as deceased.
This will stop all reminders about this pet and mark them as deceased. It does NOT go into your clinic’s statistics.
