VCPR and Telemedicine Rules in Arkansas

Arkansas ties the VCPR to recent, personal acquaintance rather than a fixed calendar deadline.

The veterinarian must have sufficient knowledge of the animal to initiate at least a general or preliminary diagnosis, which the statute defines as having recently seen and being personally acquainted with the animal's keeping and care through an examination, or through medically appropriate and timely visits to the premises where it is kept.

That gives a practice two routes — the individual-animal exam and the herd or premises visit — without attaching a specific number of months to either, which puts more weight on professional judgment about what counts as recent and timely than in states that fix a twelve-month clock.

A practice manager building an intake policy should document which of the two routes each client file rests on and how the practice defines "recently" and "timely" in its own protocols, since the statute leaves that judgment call to the veterinarian.

This is new law, and it is narrower than a codified path to establish a VCPR electronically.

Section 17-101-104(b) lets a licensed veterinarian provide veterinary telemedicine without a VCPR already in place, but only in an emergency or urgent situation, and only on condition that the VCPR is then established within seven calendar days after the telemedicine for a small animal, or twenty-one calendar days for a large animal.

That structure — telemedicine first, in-person or premises-visit catch-up required afterward — is what makes this an emergency-deferral rule rather than electronic establishment: outside an emergency or urgent situation, there is no route in the statute to form the relationship by telehealth at all.

A practice offering emergency telemedicine needs a way to flag and track that seven- or twenty-one-day clock per patient, because the statute does not describe what happens if the deadline is missed.

Arkansas's definition of veterinary telemedicine is written in terms of the channel rather than a stage of the relationship: it is the practice of veterinary medicine in which patient care, treatment, and services are provided by electronic communication, including telephone and audiovisual technology, consistent with the veterinarian's professional judgment.

Naming telephone alongside audiovisual technology is notable — some states' telehealth definitions require a synchronous audio-video connection, and Arkansas's does not draw that line in the text read.

Nothing in the two statutes read imposes a separate modality restriction on telemedicine once a VCPR already exists (outside the seven- or twenty-one-day window that follows an emergency-deferral telemedicine visit), so a practice using telemedicine with an established patient is working from this general definition rather than a narrower maintenance-specific rule.

Separately, § 17-101-104(a) limits who may provide it at all: only a licensed veterinarian may provide veterinary telemedicine to an animal patient in Arkansas, so technicians and client service representatives cannot deliver it themselves.

Separate from the emergency-deferral path, Arkansas's own definition of veterinary telemedicine names two things that are not tied to an existing VCPR because they are not patient-specific in the first place: providing health information, opinion, guidance, or recommendation that is not specific to a particular animal, and making a timely assessment and decision as to whether to immediately refer an animal patient to a veterinarian for emergency or urgent care.

In this series' own vocabulary, those functions are close to teleadvice and teletriage, though Arkansas's statute does not use either word.

Neither function involves diagnosing or treating a specific patient, which is consistent with why the statute does not require a VCPR to be in place first.

Before Acts 2025, No. 18, the two telemedicine-specific provisions read for this page — § 17-101-102(23) and § 17-101-104 — did not exist.

The saved statute text's own History line for § 17-101-102 confirms the telemedicine definitions were added by "2025, No. 18, section 1," and § 17-101-104's History line reads simply "Acts 2025, No. 18, § 2," with no more specific effective date given in either saved source.

A separate 2025 act, No. 703, §§ 54-56, also amended § 17-101-102 the same year, but its content was not read for this page.

Anything written about Arkansas veterinary telemedicine before 2025 predates the statute sections read here; that does not establish that no board rule addressed telemedicine earlier, since board rules were not reviewed for this page.

An AVMA article from around November 2023 reported that legislative attempts at allowing a virtual VCPR were not successful in the past year in Arkansas, Florida, and Michigan.

That was accurate when written, but it describes a snapshot from before Arkansas's own legislature acted: Acts 2025, No. 18 subsequently created § 17-101-104 and the emergency-deferral telemedicine path described above.

A vendor summary, training slide, or internal policy still citing the 2023 outcome for Arkansas is describing a state of the law that no longer exists — confirm any secondary source's date before relying on a characterization of Arkansas's rule.