Port Macquarie Veterinary Hospital is a well-established veterinary hospital with a rich history that spans 50 years. It is the last independent veterinary hospital in the area and boasts a team of six dedicated veterinarians and support staff that specialise in small animal care.
As a result of the veterinary team’s broad range of technical expertise and skills, the clinic serves as a referral centre for advanced orthopaedic surgery, and it also delivers general equine care and canine reproductive services.
Its focus on advanced veterinary care, together with its long-standing commitment to independent practice, makes Port Macquarie Veterinary Hospital a valuable asset in its local community and a leader in the field of veterinary medicine in the region.
According to Dr Tim Reed, Partner and Veterinary Surgeon at Port Macquarie Veterinary Hospital, one of the practice’s key goals for 2025 is to embed the rollout of Covetrus Ascend, which was implemented late in 2024.
“We’re settling into a routine and aiming to get the best out of the system, we will be adding VetCheck in the next few weeks so we can use the digital capabilities of Ascend more, including digital forms and other functionality we didn’t have with our old system, Customer Logic. We’re aiming to become more efficient this year,” Tim adds. “We’re all learning new muscle memory with a system that’s different to what we’ve used for the past 20 years.”
Fast and efficient cloud-based PMS needed for paperless practice
When considering their decision to select Covetrus Ascend for their cloud-based veterinary practice management software, Nurse Manager and Veterinary Nurse Kylie Borham said their main goal was to implement a robust cloud-based program. “Our previous system was slow, and a lot of the client files are quite big, so we’d spend a few minutes loading each record. We definitely wanted to improve on the speed,” she says.
“We also wanted to go paperless, which is why it was really handy moving forward with a cloud-based program. We also wanted to integrate easily with VetCheck,” she adds.
Tim explains that his team looked at six different practice management solutions and narrowed their selection down to Ascend. “We’d been on an old server-based system, which was a risk if the server crashed, and we’d lose 20 years of data. So, yes, it was time to change to cloud-based” he says.
He adds that several of the clinic’s vet nurses spent some time on the Covetrus Ascend demo environment to assess if they could navigate their way around it easily. They also considered Ascend’s implementation process. “It was a case of trying to find a flow that worked for us. The way Ascend looked and worked was far easier.”
Kylie agrees that it was valuable to have the Ascend demo environment trial in the decision-making process. “It was good to have the program available for us to try before we decided on Ascend. It gave us a valuable hands-on opportunity to see if we could navigate our way around it without any training. We found it very user-friendly and liked that we could add pictures to the client file,” she adds.
Onboarding experience with Covetrus Ascend
Both Tim and Kylie are satisfied with the onboarding and training for Covetrus Ascend in their practice. In particular, they’re highly complimentary of Simone, the Covetrus implementation specialist. “Simone is amazing – we love and miss her!” says Kylie.
“She was particularly good,” says Tim. “She took us through all the training. She was bubbly and happy. She understood our idiocy and our inability to comprehend change!”
He adds that Simone accommodated staff members’ leave by extending the training period, which was helpful. She also made sure that the team had access to the self-paced online learning courses to support the in-person training she provided.
“She did everything in person and gave us access to the online learning portal,” says Tim. “We went through each module of training with her live in a one-hour or two-hour session week by week.”
Responsive and helpful customer support
Port Macquarie Veterinary Hospital experienced a dramatic improvement in their software customer support in a number of areas after transitioning to Covetrus Ascend:
- Responsiveness: Tim and Kylie say they and their team consistently receive same-day responses to their enquiries now, in contrast to the sometimes weeks-long wait times they had previously.
“Replies are normally the same day,” says Tim, “whereas with our previous provider, it could take two weeks or longer before we got a response.”
- Helpful and accessible: They also find the Ascend support team polite and willing to help, even with seemingly basic questions. They also actively encourage user feedback. “The support team have been very accommodating and polite,” says Kylie. “Sometimes we ask silly questions that we should maybe already know or figure out, but they’ve all been amazing.”
“If the software doesn’t do a particular thing, they advise us to make a product suggestion, which is fabulous. I’ve done that several times – they get back to you quickly,” she adds.
- Clear and actionable guidance: The Covetrus support team also provides the Port Macquarie Veterinary Hospital team with very clear and concise instructions, which helps them implement solutions independently. “With Ascend, we get really good instructions from tech support that explain how to do things in a way that we can understand and follow,” says Kylie.
Why Covetrus Ascend?
Both Tim and Kylie are experiencing a number of positive outcomes with their new practice management software, Covetrus Ascend:
- Ease of use and onboarding: Kylie says she’s finding Ascend easy to adopt. For example, a new staff member returning from leave found it very intuitive and easy to learn. “I find it easy to navigate,” she explains. “We had one staff member return from 12 months on maternity leave. She hadn’t done her training because she’d been very preoccupied with her baby.”
“I spent a day doing some training with her on Ascend and she found it simple to use, which is great, especially because she didn’t have any knowledge of it prior. She is doing really well with it,” she adds.
This saves significant time and money for practice teams, by reducing the overall time required for learning Ascend.
- Workflow management: Kylie enjoys the visibility that the Inpatients Workflow offers. “If you’re anywhere in the clinic, you can pull it up and see that everything’s being ticked off on either the touch screen or the computers.”
“Reception knows exactly where a patient is. So, when a client phones and asks about a patient, they can pull up that inpatient and say, “Oh, I can see here that Missy’s in surgery, we’ll let you know when she’s out and ready to go home.”
- Comprehensive functionality: The team at Port Macquarie Veterinary Hospital are enjoying Ascend’s wide range of features, including consultation fields, clinical notes, charging functions, and stock management. This gives Tim, Kylie and the team the tools they need to manage the key aspects of their practice.
- Potential for efficiency gains: Covetrus Ascend also offers the clinic the ability to streamline various aspects of practice management, such as appointment scheduling, inventory management, and financial reporting. This will help them achieve even greater efficiency and reduce the team’s administrative burden.
Flexibility and mobility of Covetrus Ascend
Port Macquarie Veterinary Hospital currently runs Covetrus Ascend on 10 desktop computers and four tablets with VetCheck for the clinic’s theatres.
“We do some equine calls,” says Kylie, “and the vets take one of the tablets with them so they can access Ascend while they’re out. This means they can add notes and tell clients there and then what the fee is and encourage them to pay it. That’s really handy,” she adds.
For now, Tim and Kylie have limited the number of staff accessing Ascend on their mobile phones and online at home. “We want to ensure work-life balance,” Kylie says.
However, all veterinarians can access Ascend on their phone or home computer, so they can respond to any urgent requests.
He adds that they’ve also purchased a large digital touchscreen TV, where they display the up-to-date Inpatients Workflow. “This helps us see where we’re up to with each surgery,” he explains. “The nurses and kennel hands find this very useful because they can use the inpatient screen to tick off each item as it’s done, like pre-med, pain relief, catheters in or out etcetera.”
“That’s one of the biggest features we’ve got with Ascend – a huge smart screen in the hospital ward. It’s constantly on our surgery home, and it’s visible as staff walk past. This feature is my personal favourite,” says Kylie.
Aside from VetCheck, Port Macquarie Veterinary Hospital has also integrated IDEXX with Covetrus Ascend. This allows for the seamless transfer of lab results directly into their cloud-based practice management system. These integrations improve practice efficiency and productivity, ensure more accurate data and create a better client experience.
Final thoughts
Tim’s advice to any practices who are considering Covetrus Ascend is clear:
“So far it’s been good – in many ways better than what we had. And it will get better over time as our muscle memory kicks in. I would recommend Ascend,” he adds.
“I think it’s a great program that you can tailor to suit your clinic and individual needs,” says Kylie. “I’m currently working on this in the background by creating procedures to make everybody’s life as easy as possible. It will definitely save us time.”