For many veterinary practices, 2025 didn’t look or feel normal. Patient visits softened, yet revenue held steady due to price increases. Wellness care dipped as clients prioritized life’s essentials. Urgent cases were the lifeline carrying most practices day to day. Meanwhile, the open appointment slots created an undercurrent of anxiety. For many practices, the big question was, “What will 2026 look like?”
Economic forecaster Dr. Matt Salois expects a steady recovery to begin in the second quarter of 2026. But still, is your practice ready for the rebound? Now is the time to strengthen your systems, your team, and the client experience so that when demand for services ramps up, your practice is prepared, not overwhelmed.
Look Back Before You Look Ahead
Answer these questions when you reflect on what happened in 2025:
- Where were the bottlenecks? Was it a technology failure? Were room check-ins slow? Did you have exam room delays? Did surgical inefficiencies emerge?
- Where did client complaints originate? Were they from reminders (either inaccurate or a lack of them)? Or because of poor phone etiquette or complicated phone trees? Or because clients wanted to talk to someone and not leave a voicemail? What communication gaps interrupted the continuity of care?
- Where did personnel challenges appear? Did employee turnover creep up? Did multiple callouts occur? Was excessive tardiness a problem? Was staff training and employee development ineffective? Were team members held accountable for their actions and behaviors?
Each of those points can affect revenue. If you don’t address them now, they will bottleneck your clinic’s recovery.
For clarity, sort everything into these two categories: processes and people. You can trace most people issues to weak processes. Since leaders spend 80% of their time on people/personnel concerns, let’s start with strengthening systems.
Technology Shapes the Experience
Technology should enhance the connection, not replace it. Let automation handle the repetitive tasks so that your team can focus on what really matters: creating an exceptional client experience.
Consider upgrading your practice management software system. Cloud-based PIMS products are intuitive, integrated, and designed to remove friction. Consider features like:
- Automated client communication
- Medical record write-back
- Text message write-back
- Medical scribes powered by artificial intelligence
- Automated reporting
The few minutes your PIMS shaves off each patient visit will compound into hours (and additional revenue) at the end of the day.
Next, evaluate your client communication platform. Today’s pet owner expects:
- Real-time texting
- On-demand access to patient records
- Convenient online scheduling
- Clear, consistent follow-up from team members who care
While some PIMS have those features and others built in, if the software doesn’t meet your needs, look for applications that integrate.
Finally, customize everything. Never accept default settings. Technology is designed for the masses, and your practice might operate differently. Therefore, tailor your tools to match your flow, clients, and culture.
Follow the Patient
Map out the average wellness visit and the average urgent care visit. Trace each step and identify delays. This is known as process mapping. Many veterinary practices follow a pattern like this:
- A client checks in with a receptionist.
- A veterinary technician escorts the client and the patient to an exam room, obtains the animal’s history, and collects the vitals.
- A veterinarian completes the exam, discusses the findings with the client, and recommends care.
- A technician takes the pet to the treatment area for diagnostics or vaccinations.
- The client waits in the exam room or lobby.
- The technician returns the patient to the client and provides discharge instructions.
- The client moves to the front desk for billing and checkout.
Now here’s the reality: That handoff-heavy model creates delays, redundancies, and frustration for the client and the practice team.
Imagine this process instead:
- A receptionist greets the client and rooms the patient.
- The veterinarian and technician enter the room together.
- A history is taken and recommendations given.
- The veterinarian exits.
- A float technician steps in for diagnostics.
- In-room checkout and client education occur.
- Prescriptions are delivered.
- The client and pet depart without stopping at the front desk.
Which model is more efficient? The second one reduces bottlenecks, improves the client experience, increases exam room efficiency, and maintains a smooth, predictable pace.
Measure the average appointment times at your practice. Then, challenge your team to reduce visits by seven minutes through process optimization.
Veterinarian Standardization
Practice teams are more efficient when they correctly anticipate a veterinarian’s next step. If you have multiple doctors, inconsistencies in their recommendations can hurt the team’s efficiency and client trust in the practice. To tackle this process-related issue, standardize:
- Wellness protocols
- Preventive care recommendations
- Diagnostics for common conditions
- Pain management
- Hospital flow
Standard operating procedures do not prevent doctors from practicing the medicine they want. Instead, SOPs ensure an operational consistency that supports medical excellence.
Processes Require Skilled People
Technology, efficiency, and the implementation of SOPs must come with training. Lack of training or insufficient training is one of the most significant hidden expenses a practice can carry. Ask yourself:
- Who is trained on what?
- Who is not trained but thinks they are?
- How consistent is the training?
- How does our practice reinforce expectations?
Develop train-the-trainer programs that implement the Adult Learning Theory. You can’t rush training, nor can you skip it because “We’re too busy.” Ineffective training is how practices end up short-staffed, frustrated, inefficient, and stuck in a cycle of employee turnover.
To build high-performing people, build high-performing training.
Daily Huddles: Where Alignment Begins
A 10-minute meeting each morning can improve your practice’s operational rhythm. Use the time effectively by creating a game plan to cover the day (or the work shift in larger practices). For example, ask:
- What team members are working?
- Who is covering what area?
- Where are potential gaps or hurdles?
- Which clients are arriving?
- Which clients or patients need extra attention?
Teams don’t align by accident. They align because leaders set the tone every morning.
Optimal Outcomes
Imagine saving just seven minutes per appointment. If your practice’s visits run an average of 30 minutes, think about saving 14 minutes per hour, per provider. In a typical day — 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a lunch break — that’s over two hours recovered without you needing to hire more staff.
Imagine having more time for same-day cases, more face-to-face client connections, fewer complaints, smoother workflows, less burnout, higher revenue, greater adherence rates, and less stress.
A Call to Action
The recovery is coming, and when it does, veterinary practices with strong systems, trained teams, and streamlined workflows will be ready to capture the opportunity. Those that don’t will feel like they’re dealing with the same problems they struggled with post-pandemic.
The practices that rise in 2026 won’t be those with the nicest buildings. They will be the ones that invested in clarity, consistency, communication, and culture before the demand hit. Start now by tightening the gaps, strengthening the team, and building the systems. Be ready to thrive, not just survive.
LEARN MORE
Dr. Matt Salois, the CEO of Veterinary Management Groups and a former economics chief at the American Veterinary Medical Association, coauthored a 2025 research article, “Anticipating the Downturn: Business Cycle Forecasting for Veterinary Practice Strategy in the United States.”