If you’re a busy veterinary practice manager Googling “Practice Management Software” or “Practice Managers Software,” you’re looking for more than a list of brand names: you need simple, straight-forward examples of how new software could help you and your team work more efficiently. Luckily for you, practice manager Valerie Papuga, CVBL, is here with seven ways cloud based IDEXX Neo helps her team at Evanston Animal Hospital spend less time on the computer so there’s more time for patients.
#1 Accurate inventory in half the time
Ever put your faith in inventory tracking tools like want lists, notebooks, or shelf cards—then watched them become unreliable because staff don’t update them? “I could never get any of those to work,” says Valerie. Now Neo does it for her. Forget tallying quantities of multiple items by hand: “Setting reorder points is easy, and you can then pull a list of items that are running low in a few seconds,” she says. Even better: Neo’s integration with Vetcove can halve the time spent ordering and receiving. For starters, Neo’s Critical Stock Shortage list automatically populates to Vetcove for accurate ordering. Another huge time saver: the ability to see Evanston’s custom pricing, what’s in stock, and promotions in real time from all vendors, all on one screen.
#2 Working from home
Fridays Valerie works from home. But because she can access Neo anytime, from any mobile device, it’s as if she’s in two places at once. “Food deliveries typically arrive at our practice on Fridays,” she says. “It’s easy to enter invoices for those clients from home. And print labels for those orders remotely.” When her doctors need a prescription label printed on short notice, she’ll do that from home too, so there’s no delay in getting patients their meds. “Even if I’m outdoing errands, just being able to pull out my phone and check my callbacks, for example, is super easy. That flexibility is a huge plus.”
When our wellness panels come back, if there’s nothing wrong, the doctor doesn’t have to stop what she’s doing to call the pet owner, she can just send an email. That saves her a lot of time.
#3 Automatic results download
Waiting on your patients’ diagnostic results—or hunting for them when you know they should be there—can eat up to hours of time. Neo’s seamless integration with IDEXX VetConnect PLUS eliminates that. “When IDEXX Reference Lab results are finalized, they’re available immediately in the patient record,” says Valerie. “They’re just there.” The ability to email clients directly from VetConnect PLUS is another efficiency hack. “When our wellness panels come back, if there’s nothing wrong, the doctor doesn’t have to stop what she’s doing to call the pet owner, she can just send an email. That saves her a lot of time."
It sends the payment to the credit card terminal for you, and as soon as payment is received Neo marks it as paid. So there’s no double data entry.
#4 Goof proof credit card processing
Taking payment is another task her staff performs throughout the day. “Neo makes it really easy,” Valerie says. “It sends the payment to the credit card terminal for you, and as soon as payment is received Neo marks it as paid. So there’s no double data entry.” Another benefit she appreciates is that clients have to confirm the transaction total on the screen. “That’s nice because in case they misheard you or if the client is hearing impaired, they see the amount and confirm what they’re paying.”
#5 Online forms and certificates
Your team loves working with animals but think about all the time they spend working with paper—printing it, writing on it, filing it. Even then, paper put clients’ hands often gets left in reception. But not at Evanston. “Instead of sending home papers that clients might lose, we try to convert everything into templates that we can e-mail from Neo,” says Valerie. “That way we can keep track of everything we send to clients. We couldn’t do that if we sent it from our email account.”
New staff and relief vets can get comfortable with Neo in about a half day.
#6 Ease of use/training
As a practice manager, it’s exciting to hire new staff. And a little scary to think about the time it will take to get that newbie up to speed—especially since training typically falls to you. Neo takes some of that burden off managers, with built-in training and a simple interface that staff can quickly master on their own. How quickly? “New staff and relief vets can get comfortable with Neo in about a half day,” says Valerie. “Neo’s simplicity is a big advantage there. It takes just one click for most tasks, so there aren’t a lot of complex steps to remember.”
#7 Backed by a responsive team
Along with how easy it is to learn and use, Valerie appreciates the constant updates that Team Neo pushes out. “The fact that the developers actually listen to what the people using it suggest is amazing,” she says. “And the updates just happen: we’ll see ‘New update, click here’ at the top of the page, with a link explaining what’s new. We really appreciate that.”
See the brilliant simplicity of Neo for yourself: Get a free demo.