Wylie Veterinary Centre delivers 372 video consultations & generates over £14k / $18k in 2 weeks

Like the vast majority of global businesses, COVID-19 has had an impact on veterinary practices like The Wylie Veterinary Centre.

Policies such as social distancing and self-isolation have made it difficult for pet owners to visit the practice for routine procedures and checkups, resulting in an abrupt decline in service and ultimately, revenue stream.

With team members fearing for their jobs and pet owners facing the potential of not being able to receive pet care, Wylie Veterinary Centre sought a solution that would enable them to continue operating whilst ensuring the protection of their staff and pet owners from the transmission of COVID-19.

After evaluating non-industry-specific DIY solutions and other veterinary-specific telemedicine offerings, The Wylie Veterinary Centre decided to go ahead with Vetstoria Telemedicine for three key reasons:

1. It connects directly with their PIMS, IDEXX Animana, to display real-time video consultation availability to clients and push online bookings directly into their practice management system’s schedule.

2. It’s flexible and secure – it works on all devices without the need to download additional software or apps and is fully private and encrypted.

3. It works seamlessly with Vetstoria’s online booking widgets, enabling clients to book video consultations directly on their website with no manual intervention or confirmation required.

As an existing Vetstoria client, The Wylie Veterinary Centre team was familiar with the powerful Vetstoria dashboard and found it really easy to enable the telemedicine feature by following simple video tutorials and guides from Vetstoria.

The practice has set up three consult rooms dedicated to video, with three full-time vets available for appointments on a daily basis and the typical video consultation appointment slot being 30-minutes.

They are promoting the new service prominently on their website and enabling clients to book appointments online through Vetstoria, as well as posting about the service on their social media channels.

Furthermore, by leveraging Vetstoria’s fully-customizable booking engine, The Wylie Veterinary Centre has temporarily disabled all routine appointments, such as vaccinations and spay/neuter surgeries, allowing them to allocate designated times for clinicians to carry-out video consultations.

So far, the team at The Wylie Veterinary Centre have found that many video consultations result in follow-up medication or supplement requirements, most of which are collected at the practice following a special protocol or delivered to the pet owners home.

As of April 5th, 2020, The Wylie Veterinary Centre has performed 372 consultations using Vetstoria, a daily average of 23 consultations per day. In recent days they have been performing closer to 32 per day, which is around ⅓ of their total appointments.

If the business carries on at that rate, they expect to make over £1,200 (approx $1,500) in revenue per day from video consultations alone.

The Wylie Veterinary Centre has made up for a large portion of their revenue fallout due to COVID-19 by opening their practice up to take video consultation bookings. Their vets are able to continue helping pet owners from the comfort of their homes, which has helped them retain clients during this difficult time.

Since implementing Telemedicine with Vetstoria, The Wylie Veterinary Centre’s clients have praised the service on review sites and social media. It has done a great deal to keep them and their pets happy and feeling looked after.

The feedback from their internal team has also been positive, with many of them feeling reassured about the business’s efforts to maintain revenue and therefore their jobs.