Vets4Pets has announced that it is piloting a 'revolutionary' new 24/7 service at its practices in Rayleigh in Essex, Rustington in Sussex and Bournemouth in Dorset.
The company says that clients of the new 24/7 clinics will be able to have their pets seen and treated at any time by the same team, with the same level of service and at the same price as daytime treatment.
Research carried out by Vets4Pets showed that pet owners struggle to fit visits into their busy working lives, so the 24 hour practices will offer consultations up to 10:00pm and allow clients to drop pets off early in the morning, before traditional practices open.
In addition, the 24/7 clinics will see emergency and routine cases around the clock at no extra cost and will provide care for pets that need to be hospitalised overnight. Vets4Pets says that the practices are equipped with in-house surgical facilities, lab, pharmacy, digital x-ray and ultrasound, and will have a veterinary surgeon and nurse on-site at all times, so its clients will get the highest standard of care.
Clients of other practices within the group will also be able to use these facilities if their own vet feels their pet would benefit from overnight care and is within driving distance of a 24/7 practice.
Kirsty Bridger MRCVS, Joint Venture Partner at Rayleigh Vets4Pets said: “We have been telling our clients about 24/7 for the last few weeks and we have only received positive responses. The perceived increase level of service has been so well received and customers are delighted that we will be offering out of hours services with no extra charge. This is about listening to what our clients need and providing them with more convenience and excellent service however and whenever we can.”
Sally Hopson, CEO of the Vet Group said: “All of us at Vets4Pets are focused on leading innovation in the veterinary sector, and as our clients live increasingly busy lives, these 24/7 pilot practices are our way of helping them manage their hectic schedules, while also ensuring that pets in need of urgent treatment can be seen at any time. We are very excited about the potential of our 24/7 practices and our ability to offer customers extended quality, service and convenience of veterinary care.”
VetSurgeon.org asked Vets4Pets some questions about the new 24/7 practices:
VetSurgeon: Is V4P going to offer an OOH referral service to other practices?V4P: As this is a pilot, initially Rayleigh will only be offering this service to other practices within the VetGroup. However, once we understand more about how the model works, we may open the service to other practices, particularly in areas where there are few or no other options for them to outsource OOH cover.
VetSurgeon: How is V4P able to offer OOH consultations at the same price as daytime consults?V4P: At Vets4Pets we care about offering our clients the best service we can. We believe that it's important that clients can access veterinary care at all times of the day or night without prohibitive surcharges. The 24/7 business model is built around this concept. This is clearly a significant change from the traditional way of thinking about out of hours care within the industry and we think clients and their pets will benefit.
VetSurgeon: How will it affect the quality of life of the vets & nurses working at the practices?V4P: We have thought carefully about the rotas that the vets and nurses will be working. We've looked at best practice within the veterinary industry and in other industries which work around the clock and we have developed guidelines based on these benchmarks which will then be flexed depending on the requirements of each individual team.
VetSurgeon: Does V4P think others will follow?V4P: We hope this is something that will expand across our own group once we've completed the initial pilot phase. We believe it's the right thing to do for our clients and for their pets. This is a new way of thinking about out of hours care and we're lucky to be able to work with forward thinking Joint Venture Partners who are putting their clients at the centre of their thinking. If others follow the model, that can only be a good thing for pet owners and for pets.
VetSurgeon: Does this threaten Vets Now?V4P: We work with Vets Now in many of our practices and we hope to continue to have a positive working relationship in the future. VetsNow have a different and well established business model. Our objective is simply to offer our clients and their pets the best levels of care that we can by being able to provide them with the same level of service at the same price at any time of day or night.
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we were approached by these people to do their OOH a few months ago . I said no , do it yourselves . I expect many other people do too.The fact that they approached us suggests 1. their incumbent JVPs were not up for it and had probably not signed up for it . 2. They were looking for a better or cheaper option than vetsnow.
It will be interesting to see what happens if they try and run a normal practice doing weekend spays and castrations when a hemo-abdomen and a GDV rock up at the same time with one vet and nurse on duty and no cover. Many of these places have mushroomed without OOH cover and overnight provision relying heavily on vetsnow,some of the out of town pet superstore outlets have their vehicular access closed off at night.
An old friend owned a successful fish and chip shop for years always said opening at lunchtime and teatime tuesday to saturday was great because whatever time you opened until people only ate a set amount of fish and chips ,by opening longer you sold the same amount but had a larger wage bill . Pointless !
Hmmmm here we go again. In my opinion this makes veterinary services cheap and just makes the profession look cheap. Is it a threat to vetsnow? Probably.
Love the comment grumpyoldman!I'd tend to agree. I can't see too many people coming in with routine things at crazy times. The only way they will make the money they need to pay staff is by poaching clients from vetsnow etc. They'll then try and convert them to daytime clients too.
not convinced they really answer they "how will this affect the quality of the vets and nurses working at the practices?" very effectively. surely it must negatively affect their quality of life as they are being asked to work more antisocial hours on a rota basis presumably for no change in renumeration (as stated by grumpy old man above they will likely not be busier but just see clients whenever the client decides they can manage- good for the client but bad for health of veterinary staff) - and i am not wowed at the actuality of this click baiting headline. they are in effect open 2 hours longer than we are already for routine consults only and offering the same services as we already do. and i already work a lot of anti social hours for no extra renumeration so am not thrilled at the prospect of this becoming a trend in the veterinary profession that others will feel the need to "keep up with the jonses" regarding. bad news for all but the clients i feel. (as the patients can still be seen all day long and into the evening by us already, and through the night on our own ooh service provison but ooh fees do discourage the odd more routine thing that should be seen during our 12 hour normal working day, including being open both days for 8 hours for routine appts at weekends- how people find it "difficult to manage" to be seen during normal hours on these extended opening times i find hard to digest). not a move forward for veterinary staff welfare i feel in an already over worked sector with often poor work life balance as it is.
Don't forget, the advantage of a 'dedicated' out of hours service is that you have a team very experienced in dealing with emergency cases. Day time and night time cases differ enormously.
I am with most of the comments above. I have had some very odd consults in my time 'my dog has had an ear infection for 2 weeks but now its bank holiday monday I want seeing'. I would worry that everyone else will follow suit. Try getting a plumber/sparky/lock smith at OOH for the same price - there's a surcharge for a reason. Maybe it will encourage more people to get treatment earlier OR the owner doesn't go into work late and drops off the young dog with a FB but leaves it to 10pm to get care?
Lisa
If someone has a pet and cannot get to the vets between 8:30 am and 7:30 pm because life is so busy you really have to ask yourself does this individual really have time for a pet in their life?. I had a phone call from a V4P last bank holiday friday on my car phone at 8;30 AM while driving into the practice to see a collapsed HGE . The clearly embarrassed nurse wanted the history of a cat with an FAD so that their vet could administer an injection of emergency depo for the emergency scratching . When I looked on the computer I found one of my nurses had seen the cat in an FOC consult 2 years ago and gave them some hibiscrub to clean its wounds because they had no money then. Since then it had been neutered c/o a local charity's funding. I explained to the nurse that I was driving ,on my way to an emergency and my staff were all off for the bank holiday at home with their husbands children and families, planning a day of quality time ,where frankly you should be!!.
Having thought about it I have to say they can have as many of these clients as they like because a waiting room packed with them will generate the square root of bugger all in turnover and profit. One thing I have learned over the years is that every sperm is not sacred , you need more good clients not more of any clients.