IT Help for Veterinary Clinics

Do your veterinary practices come to you for their technology/equipment problems?

Veterinary practices are laser focused on one goal, and that’s patient care, said Staci Thorne, RVT, senior manager of products and partnerships for Patterson Veterinary. Because of the bandwidth put into providing excellent patient care, it’s understandable that they often struggle when it comes to other facets of running a business, like handling technology/equipment problems.

“Not everyone in the veterinary practice will have the IT expertise, or more importantly, the time it takes to manage the functional problems that come up,” Thorne said. “Often, the veterinary practice will end up band-aiding an issue over and over out of the sheer necessity to keep things working without interruption, which creates a looping effect of something always being ‘down.’”

There is also some struggle with not knowing where to start when an issue arises. Sometimes only one person in the practice knows how to fix the problem, and if they’re on vacation, or worse, don’t work at the practice anymore; where does the veterinary team go from there.

“It’s overwhelming to decide whose job it is now, who do they call, or where is the contact information,” Thorne said.

Unfortunately, these conversations don’t often come up with those perhaps in the best position to help veterinary clinics – their distributor reps.

Not many practices consider their distributor reps when sourcing hardware and IT, said Thorne. “They may have specific software needs like a PIMS that they think to ask their reps about, but they don’t realize the bigger conversation could be about the hardware requirements of that new PIMS, or if/how they’re going to need to back it up, or secure data, etc.,” she said. “Those reps are such a wealth of knowledge on a broad range of practice-related topics that even if their company doesn’t partner with a provider, I bet they have someone in mind.”

In September, Patterson Veterinary announced the addition of pute.us to its product offering portfolio. A provider of both hardware and managed concierge IT services for veterinary practices nationwide, pute.us is the only veterinary-specific provider in the space, and all its employees have veterinary medical backgrounds, according to a release. Pute’s hardware services include printers, security cameras and phones. Managed services include server/internet monitoring, Microsoft Office support, server migrations, software upgrades, on-site and remote support, business consulting and more. Pute is also an excellent fit for new builds and remodeling practices as it is brought into the design process in the early stages, the release said.

“Pute (derived from the word comPUTEr) is truly more than just an IT company; they’re a technology concierge service,” said Thorne. “They change the game when it comes to how to manage technical issues in the hospital; you no longer have to know who to call for PIMs vs. lab equipment vs. email providers. Pute becomes the one place you call for all your IT needs and they reach out on your behalf to whomever you would normally be stuck on the phone (away from patients) troubleshooting with.”

Thorne said Pute can live in between a veterinary practice’s PIMs and in-house labs when they aren’t sending results or orders back and forth. Pute can get that connection working for the veterinary practice again in the background while the team focuses on the rest of their day. Pute also helps with monitoring network security and protecting the practice from cyber-attack or loss of data.

“There are lots of IT providers in the medical/health care space, but I think we can all agree that human-med and vet-med are very different species,” said Thorne. “The team at Pute understands our language. They know how serious it is when X-ray machines go down and you have a patient under sedation on the table … you need that rad now. They can even take it one step further and discuss best practices or provide feedback on hospital workflow and efficiency because they have first-hand knowledge of what has worked well in practice for them. They know what data privacy rules maybe apply to human-med that don’t apply to vet-med and can help protect your practices in a way that isn’t one-size-fits-all. I think, most importantly, they also care about our patients; they know the work they do directly contributes to the success of the hospital and the well-being of the animals we treat.”

Aside from the day-to-day troubleshooting that Pute can assist with, the behind-the-scenes pieces that they manage for practices is invaluable, said Thorne. “It is so important that every practice establishes data back-up and disaster recovery plans, virus/spyware/malware protection, server and internet monitoring, and a general network security provider to ensure they’re keeping their business safe,” she said. “We cannot adequately safeguard ourselves against these risks without having an educated and dedicated IT services team!”

IT and patient outcomes

IT is a specialty in its own right, and there’s not always space for that knowledge when practices need to prioritize the skills required to provide patient care, said Thorne. “The equipment, hardware and software we use to manage and monitor patient care are so deeply connected that when something isn’t working it creates a kink in hospital flow, efficiency, morale and even revenue, all of which have a lasting impact on patient care at the end of the day.”

Photo credit: istockphoto.com/adventtr