Your veterinary practice faces an ongoing challenge when it comes to vector-borne disease management. Client outreach, appointment scheduling and maintaining the necessary supplies all take time away from patient care. That’s why effective (and efficient) prevention, diagnosis and treatment require a coordinated approach.

Integrated veterinary management software offers the opportunity to streamline your workflow. Software solutions from Covetrus® can help your veterinary practice be more productive while keeping clients happy and their pets healthy. Our flexible options allow your practice to spend less time on administrative details and more time on comprehensive vector-borne disease care.

With the Covetrus Pulse™ veterinary operating system (vOS™), you have an all-in-one solution at your fingertips. Starting with Pulse as your foundation for simplifying practice management, you can integrate other Covetrus solutions — and third-party applications — according to your practice’s needs.

Pulse’s integrated features include:

• In-clinic supply ordering and inventory management
• SMS text messaging, automated service and appointment reminders, and real-time integrated scheduling
• Prescription management and a practice-branded online pharmacy to provide clients with a convenient way to shop for pet products
• Personalized care plans for pet wellness and treatment that ease pet owners’ financial burden
• Secure payment processing to simplify reconciliation

Streamline your workflow with veterinary management software

You can optimize your veterinary practice’s workflow by following these six steps:

1. Simplify supply orders.
2. Automate your appointments.
3. Streamline screening, diagnosis and treatment.
4. Educate your clients.
5. Provide personalized care plans.
6. Save time with integrated payment processing.

Learn how Covetrus can support your practice:

Step 1:Simplify your supply orders with Covetrus Pulse

You can now find ticks that transmit diseases to pets (and humans) in almost every state in the U.S.¹ To effectively prevent and treat these and other vector-borne diseases, it’s important to have the right supplies on hand when a pet comes in for an appointment.

Covetrus Pulse helps you easily stay on top of inventory. Use Pulse to generate monthly usage reports to view what you ordered that same month last year. After adjusting for changes to your patient base, restock by ordering supplies online at mycovetrus.com or northamerica.covetrus.com.

Key products include:

Vaccines

• Nobivac^® from Merck
• Rabvac^™ from Elanco
• TruFel^™
• Vanguard^® from Zoetis

Treatments

• Bravecto^®
• Capstar^®
• Credelio^®
• Interceptor^® Plus
• ProHeart^®
• Revolution^® Plus
• Sentinel^®
• Trio^®

Step 2:Automate your appointments

Getting clients into your practice for regular screenings is essential for managing and preventing vector-borne diseases. Covetrus Rapport^™ is a set-it-and-forget-it solution for appointment scheduling.

Using a master list of clients (generated from Pulse or other compatible practice management software such as Avimark^® or Impromed^®), Rapport sends out SMS text, email and postcard reminders when pets are due for screenings, vaccines or other services. Clients can then book an appointment online in real time using Rapport. Online booking can improve client follow-through, while letting you control which days, times and types of appointments clients can book

Then — thanks to the tight integration with Pulse — Rapport follows up with appointment reminders based on your preferences. Practices report that this continuous communication with clients helps reduce no-shows, which can improve practice productivity, treatment compliance and your bottom line.

Step 3:Streamline screening, diagnosis and treatment

Vector-borne disease screening is typically part of a pet’s annual veterinary exam and can easily be incorporated into a preventive care plan. Whether you use snap tests run in-house or send blood out to a lab, Covetrus can simplify the process. Integration between your diagnostic software (such as Abaxis, Heska, IDEXX, scil, DiaSys, Antech Diagnostics and IDEXX VetConnect Plus Lab) and Pulse streamlines the transfer of test results to patients’ medical records.

If test results show that a pet requires treatment, or if the veterinarian prescribes preventives, the Covetrus Prescription Management platform simplifies follow-up. Pet owners can order prescribed medications and OTCs directly from your online storefront. Seamless integration of online pharmacy orders and patient medical records makes this process convenient for both you and your clients.

Giving your clients access to our online pharmacy makes it simple for them to stay on top of their pet’s medications. Pet owners can receive refill reminder emails — including for in-clinic purchases — and set up autoship for ongoing needs, reaping savings along the way. Integration with medical records in Pulse allows you to track what clients are being prescribed and what they are purchasing, making it easier for your practice to gauge compliance.

Step 4:Educate your clients

Client knowledge is one of the biggest obstacles veterinary practices face in the prevention and treatment of vector-borne diseases. If a pet owner doesn’t understand the importance of regular screenings and vaccinations, they are unlikely to make them a priority.

That’s where GreatPetCare^™ (part of the Covetrus family of veterinary solutions) comes in. You can curate and share articles related to vector-borne diseases from the client education library, written by veterinary professionals and reviewed by veterinarians. Use this free resource to educate clients between visits or after a diagnosis.

Make sure you’re staying up to date on the latest vector-borne disease resources and information, too. Plus, recommend GreatPetCare tools like dosing reminders and health trackers to your clients to support compliance and provide deeper engagement.

Step 5:Provide personalized care plans

Covetrus Care Plans give you a way to offer clients personalized wellness and treatment plans that ease pet owners’ financial anxiety. Plans can cover routine wellness and preventive care, dental care, chronic illness or all of the above. They are a great option to help clients manage the costs of vector-borne disease prevention and treatment.

Care Plans allow clients to pay a set amount each month, dividing high care costs into predictable, manageable payments. Care plan programs can help make clients less anxious about costs, while increasing treatment compliance for services covered in the plan by up to 94%.²

Care Plans may create a more consistent revenue stream for your practice. On average, practitioners generate 10% revenue growth in the first year from preventive care and ancillary services.³

Managing a care plan program can be tough to administer. Covetrus Care Plans and its integration with Pulse helps alleviate the burden with automation that reduces administrative work. Covetrus also offers services to help you resolve missed payments. Pet owners can sign up at your practice during an appointment. You can also send them an enrollment link via text or email to sign up between visits.

Step 6:Save time with integrated payment processing

Not using an automated, integrative payment solution could be costing your practice valuable time and revenue. Manual data entry not only takes time, but it also increases the odds of human error and incorrect accounting. Veterinary practices report saving up to 30 hours each month by using an integrated system.⁴

Covetrus Payment Processing integrates seamlessly with Pulse. After you swipe a client’s credit card, the information automatically transfers to their pet’s medical record. And our highly secure encryption can help you feel safe keeping clients’ cards on file to further streamline future payments.

From practice management and client communications to prescription management and care plans, Covetrus offers a full suite of software that can help your practice — and your clients. Together, we can help keep our animals safe from vector-borne diseases.

Discover the latest on vector-borne diseases.

References:

¹https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/geographic_distribution.html

²Why Wellness? VCP White Paper, 2022. https://dev.vcp.vet/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Why-Wellness-2022-03.pdf, Accessed May 12, 2023.

³Why Wellness? VCP White Paper, 2022. https://dev.vcp.vet/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Why-Wellness-2022-03.pdf, Accessed May 12, 2023.

⁴Integrated payment processing saves veterinary hospital time, reduces manual data entry. https://software.covetrus.com/veterinary-insights/blog/case-studies/integrated-payment-processing-saves-veterinary-hospital-time-reduces-manual-data-entry/, Accessed May 12, 2023.