How often should the recall round be repeated?

Once a month, using a four week window on the date of the last dose. A monthly rhythm keeps the list under sixty rows, which is the threshold beyond which the round never gets finished. Larger practices are better off running two rounds a month with two week windows rather than lengthening a single list: a long list is abandoned halfway through and the unworked rows are always the last ones, meaning the end of the alphabet.

Can the platform send the messages for me?

No. The recalls screen calculates due dates, sorts them into overdue, due and upcoming and shows how many days late an item is, but it sends no email and no messages to the owner and does not keep the list between sessions. Contact has to be made by a person, working from the sheet you filled in while calculating. This is a real limit and it is the reason the procedure described here keeps the list outside the screen.

What do I do when the owner says they vaccinated elsewhere?

Ask for the date and the product, record both in the file and close the row with the outcome vaccinated elsewhere. It is clinical data, not a commercial defeat: knowing that coverage exists changes your assessment at the next visit and avoids an unnecessary close interval dose. Keep the count separate though, because a high number in this category says something about the practice that no other indicator shows.

Is it worth folding non vaccine due dates into the round?

Yes, and it is the highest yielding part. Suture removals never carried out, treatment plan rechecks and skipped periodic visits create due dates nobody calls about, because there is no established habit around them as there is for vaccination. They appear in the same calculation alongside the boosters and are handled in the same phone call, so the additional cost is nil and the patients recovered often have the most concrete clinical problem.

Clinic operations50 minLevel: IntermediateUpdated on August 2, 2026

Running a vaccine recall across a list of patients

How to build the recall list, work out due dates from guideline intervals and rank the phone calls by clinical priority instead of by name.

Audience: Veterinarians
Species: Dog, Cat
Scope: Italy, European Union, Valid everywhere

What you need before you start

Un accesso all'area clinica con il permesso di consultare le cartelle dei pazienti
L'elenco dei pazienti da controllare, estratto per periodo di ultima somministrazione
Per ogni paziente la specie, la data di nascita e le date delle somministrazioni precedenti
Una persona della squadra incaricata delle telefonate, con una fascia oraria protetta in agenda

In most practices a booster is not missed because the owner forgets: it is missed because nobody is holding the list of who was due back and did not come. The record holds the data, but the data sits there until somebody decides to go and look for it, and on a busy day nobody decides that. The result is vaccination coverage that drops a few points every year without the drift ever becoming visible, because there is no moment at which it gets measured. This guide describes a monthly procedure that closes that gap: build the list of patients to check, calculate the actual due dates for each one, rank the calls by clinical risk rather than alphabetically, and record the outcome so that next month starts where this one stopped. It also states the two limits of the platform, because those are the points where the procedure breaks if you meet them unprepared.

Why recalls get lost, and it is not about memory

A booster is missed when the route that should bring the patient back depends on individual initiative. The owner remembers if they have a reason to remember, and the practice only notices when the animal comes in for something else. Between those two conditions there is no automatic check, so the return rate depends on chance and on one person's motivation, the two least governable variables in any practice.

The only intervention that works is turning the recall into a periodic task assigned to a person, with a starting list and a closing criterion. It does not need a complicated system: it needs someone to open a list every month, work through it to the end and write the outcome next to each name. The rest, meaning the date arithmetic, can be automated; the decision to look at the list cannot.

Build the list before you open the screen

The list is the real output of this procedure, and it has to be built outside the calculation screen. The best criterion is not the due date but the date of the last dose: take every patient whose last vaccination falls in a four week window thirteen months ago. That way each month you work a closed block, no patient is reviewed twice and nobody is left out.

Where the names on the monthly list come from
Source	What it gives you	Limit to keep in mind
Clinical records held by the practice	Species, date of birth and the recorded dose dates	Only holds patients you have seen: anyone vaccinated elsewhere is invisible
Wellness visit log	Patients under your care not seen for over twelve months	Does not separate those who moved practice from those who simply stopped
Surgical case list	Fixed interval rechecks and suture removals never carried out	Covers a short period, needs cross checking against the other sources
Treatment plans with a scheduled recheck	Rechecks planned and never performed	Includes patients with active disease, call these first
Front desk notes	Owners who asked about a vaccine and never booked	Has to be collected by hand at the time or it is lost

A workable list holds between twenty and sixty rows. Below twenty the procedure does not justify the setup time; above sixty it never gets finished and is left half done, which is the most reliable way to abandon it after two months. If the monthly block is larger, narrow the window to two weeks and run the list twice a month.

Calculating due dates patient by patient

The recalls screen takes the clinical data of one patient and returns what has to be repeated and when, using the guideline intervals for canine and feline vaccination. It is not an archive: it is a calculator. Use it as one, with the list already open beside you and somewhere to write the result.

Set up the working sheet with five columns
Patient name, owner, phone number, calculated due date, call outcome. Five columns are enough and stay readable on one page. Adding columns feels useful and produces a sheet nobody ever completes.
Open the recalls screen and pick the species
Species decides which schedules are offered, because the published intervals differ between dogs and cats. It is the first field because it conditions every other one.
Enter the date of birth
The date of birth separates a patient still inside the primary series from an adult on maintenance. If you do not know it precisely, use the estimated date recorded in the file and flag it on your sheet: a declared estimate stays usable, an invented date does not.
Add the doses already given
Each row takes a vaccine and a date. Enter every documented dose, not only the last one: the full series is what separates a due booster from a primary course never completed, and those are two different phone calls.
Switch on the schedules that apply to this patient
Active schedules are chosen patient by patient. An animal that never leaves the house and one that boards regularly do not share an exposure profile, and the schedule should reflect that instead of being identical for everyone.
Fill in the non vaccine dates you know
The last wellness visit, the surgery date and the recheck set in a treatment plan generate their own due items: suture removal, plan recheck, periodic examination. These are the dates nobody ever calls about, and they are often the most useful.
Generate the recalls and read the three states
The result splits items into overdue, due and upcoming, with the date and the number of days late. Copy only the first two states onto your sheet: upcoming items will come back on their own in the right monthly block.
Write the nearest due date next to the name
Put a single date per patient on the sheet, the one that decides priority. The others stay in the record and you pick them up during the call: a list with four dates per row cannot be read while talking to somebody.
Close the screen and move to the next patient
The calculation is not stored, so there is no point keeping the page open hoping to find it again. The value lives in your sheet: that is why the sheet is filled in while you calculate and not afterwards.

Ranking the calls by clinical priority

A list worked alphabetically gives the same weight to a young animal with an interrupted primary series and to an adult on maintenance three weeks late. Those are not the same problem. Call order should be decided once, written down and then followed, so that whoever is phoning has nothing to decide while dialling.

Working order for the monthly list
Priority	Situation	Call within
First	Primary series interrupted in a young animal	Two working days
Second	Recheck of an active treatment plan never carried out	Two working days
Third	Suture removal or postoperative check not recorded	Three working days
Fourth	Adult booster more than sixty days overdue	One week
Fifth	Booster falling due within the next thirty days	The current month
Sixth	Periodic wellness visit not booked	Once the list is finished

If the list is not exhausted within the month, close it anyway: unworked rows move into the next block carrying their original priority, not at the bottom. A row that slides to the bottom every month will never be called.

The call: what to say and how long it takes

A well run recall call lasts under three minutes and has one purpose: to fix a date. Anything that does not serve that purpose lengthens the call and reduces the number of calls the assigned person will manage before losing momentum.

Introduce yourself with the practice name and ask whether this is a good moment: a call that opens badly ends without an appointment even when the reason is excellent.
Say the animal's name before anything else: it is the piece of information that moves the call from commercial to clinical in the listener's mind.
Give the due date as a date, not as a vague formula: a precise date can be checked and does not sound like a pretext.
Offer two concrete day and time options rather than asking when suits them: the open question produces postponement, the choice between two produces appointments.
If the owner defers, ask permission to call back and agree when: without an agreed date the row stays open forever.
If the animal has died or moved practice, record it immediately and close the row: continuing to call somebody who has lost an animal is the worst harm this procedure can cause.

Recording the outcome and measuring recovery

A procedure with no measurement gets dropped in the third month, because nobody can say whether it is working. Four numbers per list are enough, calculated at the end of the round and compared with the previous month. Record outcomes with fixed words rather than free text: the categories below are sufficient and make two different months comparable.

Outcomes to record and the indicator they feed
Outcome	What it means	Indicator
Appointment booked	A date agreed during the call	Conversion rate of the round
Call back	The owner asked to be contacted again on an agreed date	Open rows carried into the next block
Unreachable	No answer after two attempts on different days	Quality of the contact details on file
Vaccinated elsewhere	The patient is under the care of another practice	Real patient loss rather than delay
Closed	Animal deceased, rehomed or no longer in the family	Cleanliness of the client database

The number to watch is not how many calls were made but how many appointments were booked out of the rows worked. If the ratio falls below a third, the problem is usually not the list but the call: you are phoning too late relative to the due date, or asking the owner to pick a date instead of offering them two.

Frequently asked questions

How often should the recall round be repeated?: Once a month, using a four week window on the date of the last dose. A monthly rhythm keeps the list under sixty rows, which is the threshold beyond which the round never gets finished. Larger practices are better off running two rounds a month with two week windows rather than lengthening a single list: a long list is abandoned halfway through and the unworked rows are always the last ones, meaning the end of the alphabet.
Can the platform send the messages for me?: No. The recalls screen calculates due dates, sorts them into overdue, due and upcoming and shows how many days late an item is, but it sends no email and no messages to the owner and does not keep the list between sessions. Contact has to be made by a person, working from the sheet you filled in while calculating. This is a real limit and it is the reason the procedure described here keeps the list outside the screen.
What do I do when the owner says they vaccinated elsewhere?: Ask for the date and the product, record both in the file and close the row with the outcome vaccinated elsewhere. It is clinical data, not a commercial defeat: knowing that coverage exists changes your assessment at the next visit and avoids an unnecessary close interval dose. Keep the count separate though, because a high number in this category says something about the practice that no other indicator shows.
Is it worth folding non vaccine due dates into the round?: Yes, and it is the highest yielding part. Suture removals never carried out, treatment plan rechecks and skipped periodic visits create due dates nobody calls about, because there is no established habit around them as there is for vaccination. They appear in the same calculation alongside the boosters and are handled in the same phone call, so the additional cost is nil and the patients recovered often have the most concrete clinical problem.

What to do next

Fix one day a month, pull the patients whose last dose falls in a four week window thirteen months ago and open a sheet with five columns. Calculate due dates patient by patient, copy only the overdue and due items, call in order of risk always offering two date options, and record outcomes with fixed words. At the end of the round look at one number, appointments booked over rows worked, and compare it with last month.