How to Cut Veterinary Charting Time in Half

If you finished medicine at 5pm and finished charting at 7pm, you're not alone. A 2024 AVMA workforce survey found small animal vets spend a median of 2.1 hours per day on documentation outside of appointments — and the number is climbing.

The good news: it's almost entirely fixable. Below are six changes that consistently halve charting time for the practices we work with.

1. Stop writing notes you'll only read once

The biggest charting tax is detail you don't need. Your malpractice carrier wants enough to defend the case. Your future self wants enough to recognise the patient and recall the plan. Anything beyond that is wasted minutes.

A reliable test: if your note's "Plan" section is longer than your "Assessment", you're probably over-writing. Tighten plan items to verb + dose + duration ("Maropitant 1 mg/kg SC SID × 3d") rather than full sentences.

2. Standardise the first two lines of every note

Most vets re-invent the opener for every patient: "Mochi presented today for…" Eliminate that by having a fixed structure your fingers (or voice) can produce on autopilot:

• Line 1: Signalment + visit type. ("4yo MN DSH · sick visit · vomiting × 2d")
• Line 2: Owner's stated concern. ("Owner reports decreased appetite, intermittent vomiting, no diarrhoea")

Templates are good. A predictable opening line is even better — it gets your brain into note-writing mode in seconds.

3. Dictate during the exam, not after

The single biggest behaviour change is moving the documentation into the appointment rather than batching it after. Five minutes of voice notes during the exam beats fifteen minutes of "what was that temp again?" at 6pm.

This is the entire premise of an AI scribe — and it works whether you have one or not. Even a phone voice memo you transcribe at end-of-day is faster than starting from a blank chart.

4. Cap your "free text" sections

Set a soft 3-sentence limit for Subjective and Assessment. If you need more, you're either over-explaining for the chart or you have a complex case that warrants a discharge summary instead. Both are signals to stop typing into the chart.

5. Make templates do the boring work

Wellness exams, dental prophys, post-op rechecks, and vaccine visits are templatable to the point of one-click. If your PIMS doesn't support that, an AI scribe with custom templates will.

Aim for 70% of your notes coming out of a template you wrote once. Save the typing for the 30% that's genuinely unique.

6. Sign at the door

The "I'll finish charting at the end of the day" habit is the single biggest contributor to chart drift and unsigned notes. The fix is structural: don't let yourself leave the exam room until the note is at least 80% done.

If you can't, it means step 3 (dictating during the exam) didn't happen. Go back and try again with the next patient.

Try the change for one week

The vets who make these changes report leaving the clinic 60-90 minutes earlier within a week. The first day is awkward — you're consciously breaking habits. By Thursday it feels normal. By the second week, you'd never go back.

If you want help with steps 3, 4, and 5 in particular, VetStack is built to handle the dictation-and-template part for you. Start free →