First things first. A closed practice doesn’t have to mean a closed business!

If a member of your practice team tests positive, your entire team may have to self-isolate, meaning you may need to temporarily close your practice doors. However, this doesn’t mean you need to stop helping your loyal clients and halt your practice’s income immediately.

The goal is to stay visible to your clients, even if your practice is closed, and offer help to them however you can, whether that is over the phone or video.

If you do decide to offer a remote service to your clients, you should notify them in the clearest ways possible. Honesty and transparency are important at a time of confusion and anxiety.

• State clearly that the practice will be closed until the date that staff return from self-isolation.
• If you decide to offer a remote service (such as telephone or video consultations), instruct your clients on how they can access this, whether that is booking a video consultation or call-back online since your receptionist wouldn’t be able to take phone calls.

• Consider changing your cover photos on social media to make the announcement of your practice closure (and any other announcements of changes to your service) as prominent as possible.
• Post an announcement with the essential information (closure reason, date of return and ways in which clients can consult with your veterinarians).
• Provide a link for clients to access your phone or video consultation platform (or even better, allow them to book an appointment to have remote consultation in advance).

If you are a Vetstoria customer, you can display available real-time slots to your clients and sync booked appointments back into your practice management software calendar.

• Whether it is through your practice management software or email provider, email is a great means of getting a message across to your clients quickly. Send out an email announcing your practice’s plans and reassure clients that you’re still available to them, just via different channels.
• Include a link to directly access or book appointments for phone or video consultations online, so clients can still be serviced, and your practice remains operational.

If after the consultation, it is deemed necessary for the pet to be seen in person, direct the pet-owner to a nearby open practice or refer them to an online directory such as Vet Help Direct and Find A Vet or Google.

Some international governments have advised some vulnerable groups (such as the over 70’s) to self-isolate. We know that this is a generation of pet-lovers, and they are going to rely on them during lonely times. With that said, it is essential to be open to offering them any advice or support regarding their animals’ welfare, even if it is over the phone or video. It can really make a difference.

For all pet-owners in self-isolation, they will be spending more time with their furry loved-ones more than ever. Therefore, they may be more receptive to the health of their pets during this time and actually be more inclined to engage with a veterinarian.

Here’s what you can do to help those clients who are self-isolating:

Include a message that’s addressed to the pet-owners who may be in self-isolation on your telephone answering machine. If you assume that the call may not be picked up due to the phone ringing off the hooks or reduced staff, direct them to your website where they can book a video consultation online.

Alternatively, you can direct clients to book a call back on your website. Your booking process should be set up in such a way that allocates a shorter duration so your team can actually get to the phone at that particular time. This will remove the uncertainty of the pet owner not knowing if they would ever get to speak to a real human.

Do the same for social media and website homepage. Inform clients about any remote services (such as video consultations) that you’re offering.

Your practice will need to decide internally what appointment types to prioritize. If vaccinations and regular checkups can be reduced to make room for more urgent appointments that should be considered.

If you are using a booking platform to manage your appointments, you’ll be able to set rules to limit these appointments. For example:

• Excluding certain times of the day
• Limiting or increasing the duration of appointments
• Only offering a certain number of appointments per day
• Or removing routine appointments altogether for a set period of time

Your practice may find it useful to have an extra five or ten minutes to clean and reset between every appointment. Not only does this ensure better hygiene and less likelihood of transmitting infections, but it also puts clients and colleagues at ease.

If you’re using a platform to manage your bookings, you can achieve this buffer between appointments by simply increasing the duration of every appointment by 10-minutes.

Many practices have found this useful. Instead of having people cluster in the waiting room, pet-owners can wait outside the practice for appointments, or the vet can conduct consultations off-site (for example in the car park outside the practice) where the pet-owner won’t be in contact with other people.

To accommodate for the extra time, instruct clients to wait outside, or in the case of off-site consultations simply increase the duration of the appointment and add “Consultation at Car Park” as an appointment type on your online booking platform.

You could also suggest that pet-owners send a text message to notify your team of their arrival and help identify the car they’re in.

When pet-owners queue up at the pharmacy to pick up meds or food, the chance of COVID-19 transmitting is increased massively. The general guide is for people not to be within 4 meters of each other and not for longer than 10 mins.

Set up a new appointment type on your online booking platform “Medicine Pickup” which will give pet-owners an allocation for a time. This way, the vet tech or receptionist will have time to prepare while decreasing the possibility of COVID-19 transmitting.

You may want to display a message such as “Medicine pick up only available to pets that have been seen at the practice within the last 3 months.”

It sounds difficult to imagine, but practices we’ve spoken to have taken this measure and it’s proving to be working.

If you are understaffed, it’s really important that you don’t inundate the people who are busy working on urgent matters with additional workload.

Direct all phone traffic to your website, where you can display messages that answer FAQ’s and guide those who want to book appointments to do it online. This will save precious time for your team and offer your clients the best possible experience.

We’ve spoken to some practices that are offering home delivery of prescription diets and medications to clients that are unable to attend the practice in the event of needing to self-isolate or the practice being closed.

To mitigate the risk of spreading the virus, limiting the exchange of cash has been an effective measure used by practices. It also speeds up the payment process for both parties, alleviating stress for overworked teams.