Proposals benefit practitioners

Published on
information-circle This article is more than 3 years old

The AVMA Executive Board approved four recommendations from the Council on Veterinary Service updating various position statements and a peer review manual.

The revisions are in accordance with a policy approved by the board during its July 1998 meeting, whereby position statements are subject to a five-year periodic review by the working groups that originally recommended them.

During the board's November 1999 meeting, the position statement on Guidelines for Naming Veterinary Facilities was amended to include "veterinary teaching hospital" as a designated veterinary facility. The term "doctor" was replaced with "veterinarian" throughout the guidelines.

Amendments to the Peer Review Manual were made under the section headings "Litigation" and "Communications and Record Keeping/Communication." In addition to complaints filed in civil court, a case is now considered to be in litigation "when it is under investigation by the state board of veterinary examiners."

The other revision to the manual requires all letters and documents to be stamped "confidential" during each step of the review process.

The Position on Embryo Transplant Procedures was amended to include: "The AVMA believes that the embryo transplant procedure is a function of veterinary practice, because it requires diagnosis and the use of legend pharmaceuticals and/or use of the pharmaceuticals in an extra-label manner as described by AMDUCA ..."

To clear up the inadvertent duplication of revisions to the 1982 Position on Complaints About Veterinary Service - both were approved by the executive board and the AVMA House of Delegates - the Council on Veterinary Service and the Judicial Council together recommended a new AVMA Position on Prevention and Resolution of Grievances that integrates the language of both documents. The councils selected the new title and the order of statements to emphasize the concept of prevention.