The route to running your practice efficiently while increasing profitability could be right at your fingertips. Practice management systems can often be overlooked but, in the right hands, they have the potential to transform your business…
If you were asked to name your practice’s best business assets, what would you say? Perhaps you’d describe the range of labour-saving equipment in your clinic, or the new facilities that have expanded the range of services you can offer clients.
It may surprise you to learn that one of your most valuable and profit-making tools is your practice management system (PMS), yet this key component in business success is often overlooked.
Gone are the days when veterinary software is merely a replacement for a pen-and-paper booking system. Too often, a PMS is left to quietly tick away in the background performing simple administrative functions. But it is no longer a silent partner, it has an indispensable, active role in the running of your practice.
A practice management system today should enhance efficiency, increase profitability, and improve both staff and client satisfaction. In fact, evidence suggests that businesses that use customer analytics – such as those acquired through PMS reports – are 19 times more likely to outperform competitors in profitability.
Whether you are setting up a new practice for the first time, or are already established, choosing a smart practice management system can be key to your overall success. Practice software should be a highly configurable system, so that it works in exactly the way you do, not the other way around. Let’s take a closer look at how a PMS can support your practice to best advantage.
Increase client satisfaction
The focus on improving the client journey has increased dramatically in recent years. Making sure clients have an experience worth recommending is a lot easier with the help of a reliable PMS. Parameters such as waiting times can be measured and can flag where additional support on the rota is required during busy periods.
Clients also want updates on their pets quickly, particularly if they are inpatients. Your PMS will make it easy to search through patient files to find required information such as test results, clinical notes and account updates.
We all know that effective communication is the backbone to any successful practice; there’s nothing more frustrating, for both the practice and the client, than missed appointments or misunderstood post-op instructions.
Traditionally, these communications have relied on verbal discussion, but this allows room for both human error and simply forgetting to relay important information. A PMS system can take the pressure off by making client communication and appointment reminders automatic with any mix of letter, email or SMS text message. Your clients receive the information they need easily and clearly, therefore improving compliance, and “no shows” can be significantly reduced.
Of course, not all veterinary care takes place inside a practice, and working as an ambulatory vet brings its own unique challenges. Thankfully, cloud-based technology can now deliver the advantages of in-house veterinary software to you on the road. There’s no need to rely on scribbled location instructions to make your way to a client – directions can be added to a client’s file, and, to make the wait less stressful, clients can be updated straightaway with your latest estimated time of arrival.
A significant time-saver
A day in practice is rarely without its pressures, but an efficient PMS will ultimately save you and your team time – arguably our most precious commodity.
In our ever-increasing digital world, it’s now a necessity to be able to reliably access information wherever we are, and that should include patient records and live data.
Cloud-based technology allows veterinary software to be accessible and backed-up continuously, so veterinary teams can get back to focusing on their patients and clients – this significantly reduces any ‘down time’. And once an estimate of charges has been created for a patient, it can be instantly converted to a client’s invoice. This is a huge time-saver for the veterinary team, and avoids chargeable items being accidentally left off the final account, protecting your bottom line.
Just as technology has eliminated the need for a manual appointment system, so too has it updated the process of stock control. Where we once had to devote hours of our time – sometimes entire days – to monitoring the proverbial stock cupboard, we can thankfully put our trusty PMS to use in this unavoidable task.
Yes, practice software can alleviate the manual business of tracking products and monitoring batch numbers, and it can also alert us when stock is close to its expiration date. Ordering can be completed with your main wholesaler through the PMS, and prices and stock levels can be automatically updated.
Not only can you ensure that stock levels are kept at appropriate numbers, but you also avoid money being wasted through discarding out-of-date products.
About the author
Tony Houghton is the Managing Director of VetIT, a leading provider of veterinary practice management software. With over two decades of experience developing digital solutions tailored to the veterinary sector, he offers a deep understanding of how the right technology can streamline operations and enhance patient care.
If you’re exploring ways to get more from your practice management system, connect with one of our Technology Consultants. We’d be happy to arrange a tailored demo and discuss how our solutions could support your team.
Image © iStock.com / Andrey Suslov
Original publication: VBJ257, Pages 12-15 (August 2024)
