Mike Jackson, Managing Partner of Scotland’s largest
Independent Small Animal Practice and a member of the BVHA Officers' Team, outlines the Pets’n’Vets Family’s COVID-19
Strategy.
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The Roundhouse Veterinary Hospital - Our Lockdown Story
so far…
Things are all change at the Roundhouse Vet Hospital where, in
the space of just a few weeks, a whole raft of new protocols have come into
place.
Physically, the practice is working back-to-front with
emergency admits coming via a double gate system at the back of the carpark. Brand
new printed instructional banners adorn our Carpark featuring a COVID-19
version of our logo.
Clients wait in their vehicles immersed in telephone and
video consultations before dropping-off or collecting their pets via a clever
system which safely maintains the government’s two-meter distancing rules. An
enormous lit and heated outdoor consulting room has materialised from nothing
whilst the BVHA-Award-Winning waiting room stands empty.
Inside, a greatly slimmed down team is working hard,
multitasking with new learned skills; vets take payments whilst receptionists work
as runners and RVNs cover administrative and nursing duties.
Changes extend to staff rotas and practice opening hours –
most staff are working on a novel 4-days-on-4-days-off shift pattern. In
addition, a new night shift has sprung up because with just two days’ notice,
the Roundhouse ‘went’ 24 hours.
Despite these enormous adjustments the mood in the practice
is buoyant, and messages of colleague support pop-up on the practice’s in-house
Communications App with a regular and satisfying ‘ping’. The ‘Dunkirk spirit’ is
alive and kicking in Glasgow.
There is no doubt that the disruption of COVID-19 and subsequent
Lockdown poses a brand-new level of challenge to Veterinary Practice
What follows are some of the steps that we have taken in
response to the situation so far, I hope that these may be useful for other Hospital
practices.
We have stayed on top of Guidance
We have endeavoured to make decisions as early as possible,
in order to do that we have paid dogged attention to government, RCVS and BVA
communications – trying where possible to forecast the advice whenever we
can.
We have communicated effectively and honestly with our team
We have been using an off-the-shelf Team Communications App
for some years now - our staff use it constantly and most already had it on their
own phones or devices – we were able to let our staff know in honest and
uncertain terms what was happening and what would need to be done, and used regular
messages and video announcements to reassure them.
In addition, we were able to quickly seek consultation with
our team, glean ideas and publish new protocols - all at incredible speed.
Further to this, we have been able to utilise the Communication
App to keep in touch with all members of staff (those at work and at home) in a
bid to make sure that all members of the team feel involved and not isolated –
maintaining good mental health across the team must be a priority.
We pushed out our Video Consultation App
We were lucky here; we had been involved in the beta testing
of PetsApp, a Veterinary Specific Client Communication Platform, for over a
year – we were about ready to go when Coronavirus became large on the horizon
and accelerated our plans to be ready.
PetsApp has been a huge benefit to us – it offers another
form of communications via text chat, RCVS-adherent Video Consultations and
crucially, payment over the App with daily accounting.
This has allowed us to continue with non-emergency advice
consults, whilst decreasing footfall to the practice and home-working for some
members of the team.
We have furloughed staff
During these very difficult times there is no doubt that all
sectors will suffer – veterinary practices will struggle too, tailoring our
workforce to the work available is crucial in maintaining cash flow.
The government’s pledge is to pay 80% of salaries up to a
maximum of £2500 which works reasonably well for lay staff and some nurses –
the figures get a little more difficult with higher salaried staff – vets and
more experienced nurses particularly.
We found that as we had been upfront and honest with our
team from the start, they had realistic expectations and were positive about
the decisions made. We are looking forward to having them back.
We monetised veterinary advice - a crucial part of our
strategy
Monetising advice is something that veterinary practices
have historically felt really squeamish about – our practice was no different.
These extraordinary times do rather focus the mind and we
have, with the help of PetsApp, been charging for video consults at full,
‘in-person’ consultation charges. In addition, we are asking our receptionists
to ‘shield’ (to use a COVID term) our vets from our telephone clients and have
implemented a £15 telephone consultation charge.
Again, through honest communication, our team have adapted
to this and our clients seem to have accepted the change too. To date we have
only had one client complain about a charge for telephone advice.
We have taken bold steps, consolidating resources
Making big decisions is usually very difficult, making them
under pressure of a Pandemic has seemed a little easier!
Prior to lockdown, we had two or three scenarios and
responses planned and ready to go. We were confident to ‘push the button’ when we
felt we understood what government restrictions would be. The particular
‘button’ we pushed was to close all six of our branch practices and pull
resources to our Hospital, the Roundhouse.
We brought equipment, stock and personnel to the Hospital,
using a removals company to speed up the process. All items of equipment and
stock were logged and labelled by the branch team to help us return them quickly
when the situation abates.
Branch staff members were quickly trained on working
practises in the Hospital and equipment that differed from their usual.
Thankfully, we had upgraded to a newer, cloud-based version
of our PMS a little while ago and our telephone system is VOIP (internet based)
– both has helped us to field all clients via our central hub.
We have communicated clearly with our clients via Social
Media
We
have been working really hard on Social so that we keep our clients up to speed
with our plans and developments. Being the first and clearest to announce RCVS
and BVA guidelines, Lockdown ideas and tips and positive practice stories to our
Facebook likers has made our page a bit of a hub. It has been a great way to
champion our team, our profession and to open up new services when able.
We altered staff patterns and working positions
We consulted with our team and a 24/7 working pattern seemed
to make sense to the team and to us. Prior to Lockdown our Hospital had been
staffed with Vets, Nurses, Vet Techs and Receptionists from 8am until 10pm,
then a with a Nurse team overnight to look after inpatients – we would send our
clients to an OOH provider.
Working on a 4-on-4-off rota pattern and stretching our
numbers over 24 hours has allowed us create two distinct
teams, each with three isolated shift units – the thinking being that smaller
isolated teams should be safer.
In addition, 24-hour working has allowed us to open up a new
revenue stream, increase the OOH provision in the city, which seemed vulnerable
at just two and cut down on journeys for clients with sick pets.
Many questions remain and challenges are developing all the
time – we have, for instance, just heard that our Overnight Medication Courier
Service has ‘gone down with Coronavirus’ – and we have already started work on
a brand-new system to cope.
The Positives
As well as challenges there have been many positives to come
out of the situation.
The emergence of digital communications has been a real
positive. Lower effort communications such as Text chats have brought cases to
our attention earlier in the disease process which has definitely saved lives. The
integration of Video consulting has also been a real plus - providing an
excellent way to assess some cases with lower stress for the pets involved, we
would definitely say that Video consults are here to stay.
Connected to that is a definite move towards respect for and
understanding of the value of Veterinary Advice by clients and the team.
Charging for remote-advice has become the new ‘norm’ for our staff with very
few grumbles from clients - which must be a positive in the long-term health of
our Hospital and for the Profession too.
In addition to all of that, we have felt an outpouring of
gratitude from our clients via social media and over the phone - it’s been
really lovely!