Veterinary Clinics Editing and Proofreading Services

An owner is told a procedure will be around four hundred pounds. The dog is admitted, the surgery finds more than the X-ray suggested, and the bill is nine hundred and forty. The clinical decisions were all correct and made in the animal's interest. The owner spent the afternoon not knowing, and the invoice arrived as a shock at exactly the moment they were relieved their dog was alive.

We edit what veterinary practices produce — estimates and consent forms for procedures, cost range and contingency documentation, permission-to-proceed and ceiling documentation, consent for anaesthesia and its risks, discharge instructions and their timing, treatment plan and options documentation, insurance claim and direct claim explanations, payment, deposit and instalment information, out-of-hours and referral arrangements, and preventative care and plan documentation. Our editors work on the estimate and the permission attached to it.

The estimate and its ceiling are what determine whether an owner feels informed or ambushed, and their failure is a single figure for an uncertain procedure. Surgery finds what it finds, and an estimate that does not say so has set an expectation the operation cannot meet. We write these so the estimate is given as a range with what puts a case at each end, since an owner told £400–£950 with the reasons is prepared and one told £400 is not; so the permission mechanism is stated explicitly — a figure above which the practice will telephone before proceeding, a named person to call, and what will happen if nobody answers — as this is the single most valuable clause in veterinary consent and it is frequently absent; so the option of not proceeding is presented as a real option with what it means for the animal, given that owners with limited money need to be able to say so and often cannot; so the costs that are certain are separated from those that are conditional, with the conditional ones itemised; so the insurance position is explained, covering the excess, whether the practice claims directly, what is typically excluded and the fact that the owner remains liable if the insurer declines; so the payment routes are named, including any instalment or charity option, before the animal is admitted rather than at the desk afterwards; and so the discharge instructions are written to be read by somebody who has been awake and worried since six. Estimates written this way keep owners who can come back.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including estimates, clinical documentation and client correspondence. We are editors rather than veterinary surgeons or insurance advisers, and we offer no view on clinical decisions, costs or cover. What we can do is attach a permission to the number.