Claremont Veterinary Hospital has been a trusted institution in Oakland, California, for more than 100 years. New owners wanted to continue providing high-quality, compassionate care for the area’s pets. But they also intended to bring the hospital into the 21st century — by going paperless and implementing a reliable, efficient software system.
The hospital began researching options. Their first priority was finding a system that was cloud-based, rather than on-site. “I’ve had problems with servers over the years. We were always nervous about losing our data and what would happen if something went wrong,” hospital manager, Jennifer Tacy, RVT, says*, “Cloud-based seemed like a better way to go.”
After researching several options, the hospital selected Covetrus Pulse. Not only is the system cloud-based, but it also offers more integrations with other animal health technology solutions than any competing practice management software in the industry. The leadership team chose Pulse because it provides an improved staff experience and saves time. It also connects seamlessly with other Covetrus products such as vRxPro, our new online pharmacy platform, Rapport, and Payments. In the end, Claremont paired Pulse with Rapport and vRxPro to deliver on the provider – client promise.
“Other software programs were simplistic, and that was fine. But they were limited in some of the extra features that now we can’t live without”
Claremont Veterinary Hospital
The Claremont team includes four veterinarians, a team of assistants and technicians, a pharmacy manager and receptionists. They offer wellness and urgent care, dental and surgical services, ultrasound, endoscopy and bronchoscopy to about 850 clients per month.
Setup for Pulse took about two months, and a Covetrus implementation specialist constantly communicated with staff. Practice leadership purposefully kept the hospital schedule light during the transition.
“The staff figured it out pretty quickly with limited training, and they were off and running. After day two, we were fine, and the schedule was back to normal,” Tacy recalls.
The staff uses Pulse to track the flow of patients and understand what’s happening throughout the hospital at all times. “We use color coding so the front staff know what’s happening in the back, and the back knows what’s happening in the front.”
Staff members also use the Task Dashboard feature for seamless, real-time communication. Tacy says the tasks are essential for communication and efficiency. “We send the doctors a request as a task — for example, requests from clients or from the online veterinary storefront. The doctor can simply message back to fill a prescription, schedule an exam or create an order for in-house lab work. The doctors can also put in their notes from appointments, communicate with clients and log in from home.”
The system also houses digital templates such as exam forms, prescription handouts,at-home instructions and anesthesia approval.
“The biggest thing I wanted to alleviate was reducing the number of phone calls. The phone rang for eight hours nonstop,” Tacy says. “Because we’ve made these changes, people don’t have to call us constantly to make requests. It’s all automated.”
Simplifying operations has allowed Claremont leadership to reduce payroll. Before Pulse, the hospital had 25 staff. A few went to veterinary school, and the hospital didn’t have to replace them because of increased efficiency with Pulse. Now they need only 21 staff members to manage the same client load.
Claremont also took advantage of the Covetrus online pharmacy platform vRxPro. It’s integrated with Pulse, and clients can shop for their pets’ prescription needs directly from the hospital’s website.
“Before the online veterinary storefront, we got these faxed prescription requests, and we could have a stack of charts, 30 high every day, to look through and sign. It was very time-consuming, and clients were upset that we weren’t getting them approved fast enough,” Tacy says. “By establishing an in-house online veterinary storefront and eliminating third-party pharmacies, we drastically improved efficiency of prescriptions and practically eliminated back-and-forth calls.”
In addition, the integrated pharmacy reduced costs and brought revenue to the practice that used to go to third-party pharmacies. Staff now use Pulse to compare wholesale prices, change products and adjust markups. Tacy says Pulse has been “pivotal” to that process because the staff can easily see their inventory and make changes, bringing down the cost of goods by 3% to 4%.
Pulse helps Claremont manage money in many ways. Staff can now provide precise estimates for services and get immediate approval via email or text to start providing care.
As each department provides care, staff can click to automatically add exact prices for their services to invoices. Payments are also integrated, so staff don’t have to type in credit card numbers. Before Pulse, staff stayed from 6 p.m. close until about 8 p.m. every night to correct manual errors. Now, they walk out at 6:15 p.m. every day.