Why Does a Veterinarian Need a Telemed?

1. Veterinary Telemedicine Provides Better Work-Life Balance

In her blog, Dr. Vogelsang talks about the difficult decision she made to leave clinical practice “because I couldn’t physically commit to 40+ hours a week outside the home when my kids were little.” Had telemedicine been available to her, Dr. Vogelsang says, “I would have jumped on remote care in a heartbeat.” The flexibility and time balance provided by telemedicine would have allowed her to remotely serve clients without sacrificing time at home with her kids. In terms of how veterinary telemedicine serves practice team members in similar situations, Dr. Vogelsang says, “Team members can be 100% remote, or rotate being in-house and at home,” adding that in her experience, veterinarians are “dying for this to be an option.”

2. Veterinary Telemedicine Addresses Stress and Staff Shortages

Practice staff shortages caused by COVID-19 have left existing practice staff stressed and strapped for time. Telemedicine helps reduce stress and gives staff back more time by helping to retain staff who may have to quit over extenuating circumstances related to the pandemic. Says Dr. Vogelsang, “You’re employing that technician who quit because she has an immunocompromised relative at home and she’s scared of exposure to COVID.” Veterinary telemedicine also helps attract staff members by providing a system that allows them to serve patients and clients while addressing physical distancing and other COVID-19 safety protocols and concerns.

3. Veterinary Telemedicine Saves Practices Time

Veterinary telemedicine platforms save practice time in many ways. As an example, Dr. Vogelsang says, “Virtual technicians dedicated to client support can handle all those ‘is this normal?’ calls clogging up the lines.” Yet time savings from veterinary telemedicine extend well beyond phone calls:

4. Time Savings from PIMS Integration

Veterinary telemedicine platforms that sync data from online consultations to practice management system medical records (a.k.a. PIMS integration) save veterinary teams time by not having to manually enter information into patient records during or after a consultation.

5. Time Savings

Veterinary telemedicine systems with an AI-driven teletriage Symptom Checker help pet owners assess the urgency for veterinary care and provide a recommendation for appropriate next steps, which save practices time in triaging patients.

6. Time Savings from Increased Efficiency

Telemedicine platforms with automated remote monitoring re-checks provide a more efficient way of conducting post-care follow-ups while increasing compliance. Veterinarians no longer need to dedicate time in a day to perform call backs. Instead, they can chat with clients in between appointments.

7. Petriage Was Designed for Improved Veterinary Team Happiness

Petriage, the complete veterinary telehealth solution, provides all the above benefits—and more—as a unique, robust, and flexible telehealth solution. Petriage enables modern-day veterinary practices to seamlessly integrate virtual care while maintaining the highest standards of patient care.

Petriage Features Include:

  • PIMS integration for automatic medical record keeping
  • A patent-pending AI-driven teletriage Symptom Checker for pet owners
  • Telemonitoring capabilities through eCheck – Remote Monitoring for communication and re-checks after surgery or hospitalization

Petriage also features built-in Stripe integration. A certified PCI Service Provider Level 1 offering advanced fraud protection, Stripe allows clients to pay for a consultation directly through Petriage, and offers 24/7 customer support.

Available through LifeLearn Animal Health as a standalone solution, Petriage can also be added and integrated into WebDVM websites (both for existing and new WebDVM customers) for quick pet-owner access.

What to Consider Before Converting Your Practice to a Paid Telemedicine Service

To avoid decreasing practice workflow and placing extra stressors on staff, Dr. Smiley recommends a telemedicine system that makes collecting payments easy, which is a core feature of Petriage, the unique, robust, and flexible telehealth solution that enables modern-day veterinary practices to seamlessly integrate virtual care while maintaining the highest standards of patient care.

Petriage’s features include curbside check-in and contactless payment processing (no app required), which frees up phone lines and improves efficiency for practices while strengthening client relationships by giving pet owners a convenient check-in and payment method.

Petriage: The Complete Animal Telehealth Solution

Designed to optimize practice operations and efficiencies through PIMS integration for automatic medical record keeping, a patented AI-driven teletriage tool, virtual telemedicine consultations, and automated remote monitoring, Petriage empowers veterinarians to remotely care for patients while strengthening client relationships and compliance.

Petriage provides both asynchronous and synchronous chat (including live video chat). When a client using Petriage uses the Symptom Analysis triage tool and requests an eConsult for a non-emergent pet health issue, they can immediately begin chatting with a veterinarian and provide images, text, and video clips of a pet concern. Their veterinarian can then schedule a follow-up consultation in keeping with urgency to maximize time and workflow.

To further save administrative time, the entire chat is directly recorded into a pet’s medical record.

As a cloud-based service, Petriage provides a unique software platform (developed by a veterinarian) by which clients can use the Petriage online Symptom Checker tool. This allows them to assess the urgency of their pets’ symptoms and, when applicable, provide clients the opportunity to request online consultations remotely.

Offering three incremental service levels (teletriage, telemonitoring, and telemedicine) to fit the needs and budget of any practice, Petriage has read and write back capabilities to automatically sync data from all three levels to practice management system medical records. Petriage currently integrates with Cornerstone, AVImark, ImproMed, eVetPractice, and IntraVet (the latter does not have writeback).

Prices start at just $49 USD/month ($69 CAD/month).

  • No setup fees
  • Unlimited staff users
  • Unlimited consultations
  • Be up and running in as little as one week

Petriage is available in two levels. Schedule time with one of our subject matter experts to determine which one is right for your practice.

Click here to book your Petriage consultation today or call Sales at 1 (800) 375-7994 ext. 1 to take advantage of this limited time offer.