# Jeff Kowalski, DVM / Owner at Kowalski Animal Clinic — read of VetAI, May 13 2026

> 17 years practicing, 11 years owning a single-location mixed practice in Naperville IL. Three DVMs including me, two techs, one front desk full-time and one part-time. Coaches his daughter's U12 soccer team Saturdays. Currently on AVImark, a text reminder service I pay $89/month for separately, and a lot of goodwill from my front desk person Lisa who I genuinely cannot afford to lose.

## How I got here

Stayed 40 minutes late on a Tuesday finishing discharge summaries from the afternoon block. Not for the first time. I googled "automate discharge summaries veterinary" at 7:20pm from my car. This page was the third result. I clicked because the title was direct and I was tired.

## What I clicked first

The hero stopped me: "Your front desk stops spending two hours a day on the phone and starts spending it on the patients in front of them."

That's not aspirational, that's Lisa's exact Tuesday. She gets in at 8 and I can hear her on reminder calls until 10:30. The framing was accurate enough that I kept reading instead of bouncing, which is more than I can say for the last three of these I've seen.

## Where I paused

The integration list. "VetAI integrates with AVImark, Cornerstone, ezyVet, Shepherd, Impromed, DVMax, and 12 other systems."

AVImark is on there. That's not nothing. A lot of these tools list Cornerstone and ezyVet because those are the prestige names, then it turns out AVImark integration is "export a CSV every night." The phrase "Most practices are live the same day they sign up" either means their AVImark connector is real and solid, or it means they're going to hand me a CSV import guide and call that an integration. I'd need to verify that specifically before I took this seriously.

## What I distrusted

The testimonial numbers. "We went from 22 Google reviews to 91 in about three months." That's a real number that sounds real. Fine. But "3.4h saved per day on calls and paperwork" and "$840 avg. monthly recovered from no-shows" -- those have the texture of numbers someone calculated once on a favorable sample and then locked in as a headline stat. I've seen those exact formatting choices ("3.4h" not "3 hours", "$840" not "around $800") used specifically to make made-up averages feel empirical.

Also: "Not a generic healthcare AI adapted for animals. VetAI was designed from the ground up for the workflows, terminology, and client relationships that define independent veterinary medicine." That's the sentence every one of these says. Every single one. Showing me AVImark on the integration list does more to prove that claim than that sentence does.

The reviewer photos and names -- Dr. Rachel Nguyen, Denver; Marcus Webb, Atlanta; Dr. Carolyn Marsh, Minneapolis -- feel very stock. Nothing wrong with them individually but the geographic spread and the clean headshot energy sets off a low-level alarm I can't fully silence.

## What would convince me

I want to see what the discharge summary actually looks like for a real visit. Not a mock. A real SOAP note from a routine wellness with a vaccine and a dental recheck, and the summary that VetAI generated from it. Two paragraphs, plain language, client-ready. If that output is good enough that I'd send it without editing, I'm in.

Also: one specific AVImark practice I can call. Not a testimonial. A name and a phone number. I'll call. I've done it before with other software and I'll do it again.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. Your AVImark integration -- does it write back into the patient record, or does it pull data one direction and the discharge summary lives only in your system? I need to know where the source of truth sits.

2. The discharge summary feature says it drafts from SOAP notes my DVMs enter. My afternoon DVMs vary a lot in how complete their SOAP notes are. What does the summary look like when the note is thin -- does it fail gracefully or does it produce something I'd be embarrassed to send a client?

3. The pricing page got cut off in what I was reading, but is the $197 per location? I have one location, so that's straightforward, but I want to know if there are per-user or per-volume charges hiding somewhere before I start a trial.

## Verdict: curious-enough-to-reply

The page solved the problem I actually have, described my front desk's day accurately, and listed my PMS by name. That's three things most of these don't do. I'd send one email and see how fast and how specifically they answer.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-13. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*