Customization in Vet AI Scribes

How It Can Hurt Accuracy?
How a Smart AI Scribe Safeguards It?

Customization sounds appealing. Every clinic has its own style of SOAP notes, discharge summaries, and preferred formats. But with AI scribes, more customization isn’t always better. Over-customizing templates can cause hallucinations, repetition, and omissions—making your records less accurate, not more.

The good news? The best AI scribes are built with safeguards to handle these situations so your notes stay reliable no matter how you structure them.

1) Hallucination from Over-Structured Fields

The risk: AI scribes are trained to fill in what looks like “missing” content. If you add fields that don’t apply to every case, the system may generate something just to avoid leaving the section blank.

Example:

• A custom “Diagnosis” field is added in the Assessment section.
• During a wellness exam, no diagnosis is actually made.
• The AI invents one like “Canine obesity” or “Mild gingivitis.”

Safeguard in good scribes: Well-designed systems know when silence is the right answer. If no diagnosis is discussed, the field is simply left blank—not auto-filled.

2) Repetition When Fields Overlap

The risk: Splitting the Plan into overlapping fields (e.g., “Follow-Up,” “Treatments,” “Client Communication”) creates redundancy. A single instruction can be duplicated across multiple categories.

Example:

• Vet: “Recheck in 2 weeks after the next treatment.”
• AI places it under Follow-Up, Treatments, and Client Communication.

Safeguard in good scribes: Advanced systems use de-duplication logic to detect when the same instruction applies to multiple categories. Instead of repeating it three times, the note appears once in the most relevant section—with cross-links if needed.

3) Omissions from Forced Sectioning

The risk: Overly rigid templates can cause the AI to drop details that don’t have an obvious home.

Example:

• Owner: “She’s been drinking a bit more water.”
• If there’s no field for “Owner Observations,” the detail may vanish.

Safeguard in good scribes: Strong scribes include a catch-all fallback, like “General Notes” or a standard Subjective field. If a detail doesn’t map neatly to a custom slot, it still gets captured instead of being lost.

4) Wrong Section Assignments (S ↔ O ↔ A ↔ P Confusion)

The risk: Complex custom templates can confuse the AI about what belongs in Subjective, Objective, Assessment, or Plan. This can lead to misattribution between owner statements and veterinary findings.

Example:

• Owner: “She’s been limping on her right hind.” → accidentally logged as Objective.
• Vet: “Mild pain on hip extension.” → accidentally logged as Subjective.

Safeguard in good scribes: Reliable systems use speaker-attribution safeguards and SOAP-aware models. They anchor information to “who said it” (owner vs. vet) and “what type of statement it is,” even if the template format shifts.

The Bottom Line

Customization can introduce hallucinations, repetition, omissions, and wrong sectioning—all of which create risk and extra editing work.

But the right AI scribe has built-in safeguards to prevent these pitfalls:

• Leaving inappropriate fields blank instead of guessing.
• De-duplicating overlapping plan items.
• Capturing stray details in fallback sections.
• Keeping speaker attribution and SOAP assignments accurate.

Takeaway: Customization isn’t bad—but it only works if the AI scribe is engineered to handle it gracefully. Test your templates with real cases, and choose a system that prioritizes accuracy even when customized.