See VTH Policy

Small Animal Euthanasia, Care of Body Remains and Fees

Overview

When select euthanasia procedures are charged out on a patient account in SANDI, a notification is automatically sent to the referring veterinarian (RDVM) stating that his or her patient was euthanized. The communication is sent based on the preferred Method of Communication (MOC) setup on the rDVM account.

This notification is sent only when all of the following are true:

1. There is an RDVM associated with the patient’s SANDI Visit
2. The associated RDVM has a valid MOC on their account.
3. The patient must have an open visit when the euthanasia charge is entered. (No notification will be sent if there is no open visit.)
4. The euthanasia or died procedure code being charged is set up to trigger the communication to the rDVM. Examples below:

Communication Log Entry

Once sent, an entry will automatically be written into the patient Communication Log.

Select the View Icon to see the communication.

Note: the format is identical to what the rDVM will receive. 

Sample of Email sent to rDVM

Faxing Overview

Faxes are sent via the Hylafax service sponsored by AITS.  There are a few instances when a fax is not sent which are detailed below

Visit missing rDVM

•  If the patient’s Visit does not have an associated rDVM, then the script exits silently with no attempt to send a fax.

rDVM without fax machine

• It has been standard practice that if an RDVM that does not have a fax machine, Medical Records staff would enter 000-000-0000 into the fax field in the RDVM’s account in the Professional Referrals Maintenance screen in Vetstar. When an RDVM exists, but the fax number is all ‘0’s, it exits silently before attempting to send the fax.
• rDVM account without a fax number or email in their account will not send.

• If a fax fals because the number is busy, ‘no carrier detected’, or other reason, the failed fax information is written to a report that is emailed to the medrec@cvm.uiuc.edu list. This is done using a script written by Bob Schafer (/usr/local/sbin/vetstar-faxes/vet-fax-check) that searches through the sent fax queues, which is run by cron daily at 2 AM.
• Once a fax is sent via SANDI there are no logs or ability to see that the fax was sent out from the Hylafax service.  If we need to check the status of a sent Fax, we should contact AITS at aitsapps@uillinois.edu.