Two clinics caring for one cat sounds like double the expertise, and it is, right up until each assumes the other holds the full picture. The specialist believes the regular practice sent recent imaging; the regular practice believes the specialist explained the changed medication. You are the only person present at every appointment, which makes you the coordinating copy-holder, and coordination works only when the record set moving between clinics is one defined thing rather than a shifting pile of printouts.
One Master Set, Held By You
Define the set once and keep it identical in every copy: discharge summaries, a medication list in generic terms, imaging and next steps. Nothing more exotic is required. Discharge summaries carry what was found and done at each visit, written by the clinic itself. The medication list names what she currently takes in plain generic terms, with when each is given, and it is updated the day anything starts, stops or changes, never reconstructed at the next appointment. Imaging means the reports and, where the clinic provides them, the images themselves, filed so a new vet can review rather than repeat them. Next steps record what happens now: recheck timing, monitoring instructions, and which clinic owns which action. Keep the master set at home, in one folder or file, and treat every other copy as a snapshot of it.
The Flow After Every Appointment
After any visit, specialist or routine, ask for the written summary before you leave, file it in the master set the same day, and send the updated set to the other practice, confirming it arrived rather than hoping it did. Before a specialist appointment, send the set ahead, so the consultation starts from her history instead of from your memory under pressure; specialists consistently do better work when records arrive before the cat does. A one-page front sheet helps everyone: both practices' names and contacts, the condition each is managing, and a line for the newest item in each part of the set. If advice seems to conflict, do not quietly choose; relay each clinic's wording to the other and let them reconcile it, with your regular vet as hub.
A Worked Example: One Specialist Visit
Keep a spare copy of the whole set somewhere separate from the master, a folder with a trusted person or a scanned set stored safely, because records kept perfectly in one place can still be lost to one burst pipe. An out-of-hours emergency clinic is the third audience owners forget: arriving at midnight with the current set, front sheet on top, lets an unfamiliar vet act on the specialist's findings and the current medication list immediately, instead of stabilising blind. That single scenario justifies the entire system, and it is the one owners describe afterwards as the moment the folder stopped feeling like admin.
She attends the specialist on a weekday morning. At checkout you collect the visit's discharge summary, which describes the findings and procedure in the clinic's own words. In the car you update the medication list in generic terms, adding the new medicine as a morning-and-evening entry and removing the one the specialist stopped. That evening you add the imaging, in this case the report from the scan performed that day, and the next steps, written as the recheck in the timeframe the summary specifies, blood monitoring at your regular practice, and the signs that should prompt an earlier call. Before the week ends, the complete set, discharge summaries, a medication list in generic terms, imaging and next steps, goes to your regular practice, and you confirm receipt. At her next routine visit, her regular vet is reading the specialist's words, not your summary of them. Holding the master set in KinsLe makes this flow almost automatic: a Pet Passport gathers those records into a single portable packet, making the copy you send either clinic the current set, not whichever printout surfaced first.