Veterinary Solutions

The economics of veterinary practice have shifted dramatically in the last decade, and most practice owners have not updated their operations to match. Revenue per full-time-equivalent veterinarian has increased, but so have client expectations, staffing costs, and the complexity of care. The practices that are thriving are not necessarily the ones with the best medicine — they are the ones that have figured out how to run the business side without it consuming the clinical side.

Here is the number that keeps veterinary practice owners up at night: client attrition. The average veterinary practice loses 15-20% of its active client base every year. Not because the care was bad — because the practice failed to remind the client that their pet was due for a visit. In a practice with 3,000 active patients, that is 450-600 patients quietly disappearing every year. At an average transaction value of $250-350, that represents $112,000-$210,000 in annual revenue that evaporates simply because nobody had time to work the recall list.

The operational bottleneck in most veterinary practices is the front desk. A typical small animal practice with three to four veterinarians processes 40-60 appointments per day, handles 80-120 phone calls, manages walk-in emergencies, processes pharmacy refills, fields questions about post-surgical care, and somehow finds time to work the recall list. The front desk team is the human middleware connecting EzyVet or Covetrus to the actual client experience — and they are overwhelmed.

What makes veterinary uniquely challenging is the emotional dimension. Pet owners are not just scheduling a service — they are managing the health of a family member. A missed vaccination reminder is not just a lost appointment; it is a client who feels the practice does not care about their pet. A lack of post-surgical follow-up is not just an operational gap; it is an anxious owner who does not know if their dog’s recovery is normal. Every communication failure erodes trust in a way that is difficult to recover.

The consolidation trend in veterinary mirrors what happened in dentistry a decade ago. Corporate consolidators now own a significant share of veterinary practices across Australia and the US, and their advantage is not clinical — it is operational. They run centralised call centres, automated reminder systems, and standardised follow-up protocols that independent practices simply cannot replicate with manual processes. The independent practice owner who is also the lead veterinarian, the HR department, and the IT support team does not have the bandwidth to build these systems manually. But they can automate the workflows that corporate practices have built dedicated teams to handle.

The tools are already in place. EzyVet or Covetrus handles clinical records and scheduling. Gmail handles client communication. Google Calendar manages the appointment book. Google Sheets tracks the metrics that matter. The gap is not in the tools — it is in the connections between them. When a vaccination reminder in EzyVet does not automatically generate a personalised email to the client, someone has to do it manually. When a post-surgical follow-up is not automatically scheduled three days after a procedure, someone has to remember. When inventory hits a reorder point, someone has to notice and act.

The articles below dig into the specific workflows that consume the most time and lose the most revenue in veterinary practices. Wellness exam scheduling is the starting point because it represents the single largest opportunity for revenue recovery and client retention — and because it is the workflow where the gap between what should happen and what actually happens is the widest.