Wellness!
Hey folks,
Today’s update is the one you’ve all been waiting for (at least according to our call logs): Precision Veterinary will officially be expanding into an (almost) full-service wellness clinic starting in August! I think I’m going to format this post as a giant Q&A to make it easier for people to jump around to the parts they’re most interested in without having to sit through my ramblings about everything else. So, without further ado:
So what kinds of appointments will you be seeing?
Starting in August we’ll be opening up the two exam rooms (currently re-purposed as ‘Kitten Prison’ and ‘Nervous Dog Suite #1’) for normal routine wellness visits. We’re hoping to be able to serve as a primary veterinarian for those of you who have asked, and see pretty much everything any other non-emergency vet would. We will not be purchasing imaging equipment (aside from being massively expensive, that stuff also takes up a lot of space that we don’t have available in the clinic) but we will be able to do things like annual physical exams, vaccines, ear infections, skin conditions, or basic evaluations of medical concerns. For the first month or so, we’ll aim to keep things a little light just to make sure we’ve got all the kinks worked out.
What about dentals?
Coming in September. This is the single most common request we get. Period. Everybody wants affordable dentals. We get it, we want to help, we’re working on it. We’re currently rearranging the clinic to create a space for them and I think we’ve figured out how to do it, but we’re also going to give our new vet a little time to get settled in before we just inundate her with teeth cleaning requests. Stay tuned though, because we’re currently planning for one day/week for these, meaning that the wait list will probably fill up pretty fast as soon as we open scheduling.
Who is this new vet?
Dr. Gaebler (Right) and Pi (Left). The human is the one joining us, although Pi will be offered a position in reception if he’s interested.
Dr. Abby Gaebler, DVM. Check out her bio on our team page! Abby has been kind enough to dedicate huge amounts of unpaid time during her month off to helping us set up this program and seems to be a pretty seamless fit into the culture around here. You can expect the same kind of focus on integrity and customer service from her as you’ve come to expect from the rest of us. We won’t recommend things you don’t need, we won’t mark up prices more than we need to in order to pay our rent, and we’ll always tell you when we think there’s a better option out there than what we can offer. We’ll also be bringing on another CVT and another receptionist, but I don’t have their bios uploaded yet.
How do I schedule?
Use the same link you’ve been using for surgical visits, except now it’s going to look a little bit different. You’ll have the choice of scheduling a Spay/Neuter appointment or a number of different kinds of Wellness appointments:
Clearly, text wrapping is not a feature of our scheduling software
Update: They actually fixed it!
Healthy Pet Exam: A quick exam for a healthy pet, good for checking on vital systems, updating vaccines, and picking up preventatives. It’s recommended that every pet check in with a doctor at least once per year just to catch things before they become problems.
Medical Concerns Exam: A slightly longer exam for addressing specific concerns. The extra visit time here will allow Abby to do a more thorough exam of things like ear infections, sneezing or coughing, skin conditions or other minor concerns.
New Pet/Client Visit: Another slightly longer visit for first time clients and new pets. This visit gives Abby a bit of extra time to answer questions about the clinic, offer recommendations for your pet and do a more thorough exam. Use this visit if either you or your pet haven’t been here before.
Tech Appointment: A quick visit with our CVTs, these will be available at scheduled times throughout the day when they have a bit of downtime. There will be no veterinary exam with these visits, but if your pet has already had an exam with us and just needs a vaccine boostered or blood drawn for a test, these are a much more affordable option.
And, of course, you can always call us to schedule and Becca, myself, or our new receptionist will be happy to help set you up with the most appropriate type of appointment and timeslot. When scheduling, please be as specific as you can about what your pet needs — it helps cut down on surprises the day of the appointment which makes the day a lot smoother for everybody.
Be specific in this section — it really helps us prepare for your appointment.
What about cost?
Right now it’s looking like brief exams will cost around $40 and more thorough exams around $60. So, while we’ll still be on the more affordable end of things, it won’t be the same kind of ridiculous savings you’re used to from our surgical side of things. This is because try though we might, wellness doesn’t work the same way as surgery. No matter how good you are as a vet, an exam visit still takes around the same amount of time to do well and the supplies we use still cost the same amount. So, while we can get away with charging around 1/3 what we ought to for surgery because Dr. Meghan is just that good, there’s not much we can do to safely cut costs for wellness, and when it comes right down to it, we’ll prioritize quality of care over cost every time.
Why is there a mandatory deposit?
We currently have around a 10% no-show rate for surgery. This means that for every 20 people that schedule, 2 of them don’t show up or give us reasonable notice (we can’t really fill your slot if you cancel the night before). It’s mildly annoying, but not really a big deal since our surgical schedule is fluid so we can work around it most of the time. Wellness doesn’t work that way. Because the appointments are at set times throughout the day, a no-show actually does a lot of damage to our day. Our current pricing and scheduling model will allow our wellness program to barely break-even, but having a bunch of empty slots throughout the day will bankrupt us pretty quickly. So, we needed to institute a deposit to ensure people actually came to their appointments pretty reliably. Don’t worry, if you need to cancel and give us at least 48 hours notice, we’ll absolutely refund it. We just ask that you give us enough time to refill your appointment slot if you cancel. Much like our surgical side, we need to stay busy to stay in business.
You can ignore the ‘non-refundable’ part. For reasons that are unclear to us, that phrase is hard-coded into the scheduling process. Just please give us reasonable notice if you need to cancel.
RESCUES — what does this mean?
For the rescue side of our practice, I think this just means more of the stuff you want for the most part. We’ll be expanding the number of drop-off appointments we can take each day so there should be less wait time to get in. We’ll also now be able to do CVIs at scheduled appointment times for those fosters who prefer not to have to make multiple trips (these will be a little more expensive than drop-offs since they’ll take an appointments slot). Even better, a lot of the stuff we used to have to send elsewhere we’ll be able to see now, including some more complicated surgical cases, since now we can do a pre-surgical consult with Abby before the day of the operation.
Hopefully that covers most of the big stuff, but if I missed something, please just ask in the comments and I’ll update the post with your questions and answers.
~George