Changing practices is where open threads go missing: a recheck mentioned in one summary, a result still awaited, a review date that only exists in the old practice's diary. A careful transfer treats her summaries as a handover between clinicians, with you as the courier who makes sure nothing pending falls between the two.
Transfer the Summaries and Prove They Arrived
Request the transfer from the old practice in good time, naming the new practice and asking for her complete history rather than a short discharge note. Your own file needs, for each practice she attends, the newest summary, recording why she went, what the vet found, what remains pending, and when she is next due in, and the transfer should carry at least that much for every practice involved in her care.
Then confirm receipt at both ends: ask the old practice when the history was sent, and ask the receiving team to confirm the file sits under her name. Bring copies of your own to that first appointment regardless, because the day a transfer stalls is always the day the new vet needs the detail. A portable copy in your hands makes the appointment useful even if the practices' systems are still catching up.
Walk Every Pending Item Across the Bridge
Before the first appointment, list every pending item from her summaries on one page: the item, the date it arose, and the next step the old practice had planned. Hand that page to the new vet and go through it together, item by item, agreeing what the new practice now owns, what it will recheck, and what it is content to watch.
Check her next appointment as part of the same conversation. If the date sits with the old practice, rebook it with the new one or get the new vet's agreement that a different date serves her just as well. What you are preventing is the quiet gap where the old practice thinks the new one is handling an item and the new practice has never seen it.
While the transfer is in progress, keep her care continuous in the practical sense too: know which practice to phone at night during the changeover weeks, and write that answer on the front of her file so anyone caring for her is not left choosing between two numbers. If she needs care before the first new-practice appointment, take your own copies with you to whichever practice sees her, and afterward ask that practice for its summary as well, filed with a note explaining the timing. A transfer period often adds one extra summary from an emergency visit, and that extra page is part of her story, not clutter to discard once the move settles. Keep both practice names on the cover note until the first new summary arrives, so the join in her history stays traceable afterward for any reader.
Settle Into the New Practice Cleanly
Update every copy of her file with the new practice's name, address, and phone number, and retire the old practice's details to a history note rather than deleting them, because older summaries still name that practice and a future reader may need to trace them.
From the first visit onward, request each new summary and file it at the front as before, so the transferred history and the new history form one continuous file. Her transferred summaries settle inside Pet Passport as one continuous record, and KinsLe keeps that record whole while her care moves from one practice to another.