On the wire

Hill's releases small-dog clinical report as breed mix shifts practice case loadMedetomidine premedication halved hypotension rates in a randomized spay-neuter trialChewy Health releases first veterinary do-not-crush medication listZIP code practice density varies five-fold inside single metro areas, Terminal data showsA vet student four weeks from boards says practices are asking the wrong hiring questionAAHA data shows 17% of lab tests go unbilled, and server-based PIMS are part of the reasonMount Pearl animal hospital closes after 39 years citing veterinarian shortageFront-desk checkout averages seven to 10 minutes, in-room checkout takes two to fiveHill's releases small-dog clinical report as breed mix shifts practice case loadMedetomidine premedication halved hypotension rates in a randomized spay-neuter trialChewy Health releases first veterinary do-not-crush medication listZIP code practice density varies five-fold inside single metro areas, Terminal data showsA vet student four weeks from boards says practices are asking the wrong hiring questionAAHA data shows 17% of lab tests go unbilled, and server-based PIMS are part of the reasonMount Pearl animal hospital closes after 39 years citing veterinarian shortageFront-desk checkout averages seven to 10 minutes, in-room checkout takes two to five

Editorial policy

How VeterinaryPracticeNow is made

This page says how our articles are produced, what is checked before one is published, and who answers for the result. We would rather tell you plainly than have you guess.

Who writes the articles

Most articles are unsigned and run under the desk byline, The VeterinaryPracticeNow Desk. Those articles are drafted by our editorial team with the assistance of an AI editorial system (Dirk). Dirk is software. It is not a person and it is not a veterinarian. Published by HomeLife Brands.

Our editorial team, with Dirk's assistance, reads the trade publications, associations and journals we monitor, picks the stories that matter to a practicing veterinarian, and drafts each article from the source material under this editorial policy. Every desk article says so at the bottom of the page.

A piece that reflects one person's judgment carries that person's name and links to their profile on the authors page.

What is checked before an article is published

Every draft has to pass the same checks. An article that fails one is held.

A named, linked source. Every news article names the report, filing, paper or announcement it is based on and links to it.
Facts checked against the source. Figures, dates, quotes and statistics in the draft are compared with the source. Anything the source does not support is removed or corrected before publication.
Quote or attribute. When we use a source's wording, it goes in quotation marks or is attributed to the source. An article is held if more than 10 percent of it repeats the source's wording without quotation marks, or if any unquoted passage of 25 words or more matches the source. For clinical material we quote or attribute instead of rewording, because rewording can change what a finding means.
No repeats. A story we have already covered is not published a second time from a different source.
A daily limit. There is a ceiling on how many articles can be published in a day.

These checks are automated. A person does not read every article before it is published, and we do not claim otherwise. The publisher can correct, hold or remove anything that has been published.

How we report clinical research

Every study item names the journal, the study design or sample size, and at least one limitation of the finding.
Claims are sourced to the paper itself, not to a press release about it.
We report what a study found. We do not tell a reader what to do clinically. Nothing here is clinical advice or a substitute for a veterinarian's own judgment.
We do not call a treatment a cure or a gold standard unless the study we are reporting uses that term.

Veterinary review

Articles are not reviewed by a veterinarian unless the article names the reviewer. When a named veterinarian has reviewed an article, the article says who, with their credentials. We do not use a general "reviewed by a veterinarian" label.

Images

Article illustrations are either generated by AI or licensed stock photographs. Stock photographs carry a credit line under the image.

Advertising and sponsorship

The publication is supported by sponsors. Paid placement does not buy coverage, and sponsors do not see articles before readers do. Company announcements on the PR Wire are labelled as the company's own words and are kept out of the newsdesk. The details are on the about page.

Corrections

When we get something wrong we fix the article and log the change. How to report an error, and the log itself, are on the corrections page.

Who is responsible

VeterinaryPracticeNow is published by HomeLife Brands. The publisher is Marshall Morris, who is responsible for everything published here, including the articles our editorial team drafts with Dirk's assistance. Reach the desk at VPN@homelifemedia.com.