Sunbury Animal Hospital is a mixed animal practice committed to providing the very best in veterinary care and customer service. Staffed by eight doctors and dozens of skilled technicians, assistants, kennel and boarding specialists, receptionists, and office personnel, the bustling hospital has been serving the Central Pennsylvania community since 1952.
With a history spanning more than 70 years, Sunbury Animal Hospital knows from experience that innovation is key for practice longevity. In April 2022, the practice decided to migrate from its outdated server-based system to ezyVet, one of the world leaders in cloud-based practice management software.
We caught up with the Sunbury Animal Hospital team to learn more about the migration and what’s changed since making the move to ezyVet.
Server-based system causes traffic jams
For more than 15 years, Sunbury Animal Hospital had been powered by DVMAX, a server-based practice management software. Initially, the system was a good match for the hospital, but significant administrative bottlenecks began to arise as the practice grew.
While the system digitized some processes, certain elements - such as the hospital’s treatment whiteboard - remained analog, which resulted in a lot of paperwork related to hospitalized patients. In addition, DVMAX did not allow multiple people to access a patient’s record at the same time, which began to cause traffic and delays in the waiting room.
“One of our biggest frustrations was that you could only have one person in the record at a time,” said Heidi DiPerna, Medical Director at Sunbury Animal Hospital. “So, if the client was trying to check out at the desk and the doctor was putting in notes, you both couldn't be in the record at the same time. You had to wait for one person to finish before the next person to get in. Meanwhile, the client might have been waiting 20 minutes - it just created a lot of traffic.”
The writing was on the wall: the practice was due for an upgrade. After talking to an IDEXX consultant, Sunbury Animal Hospital decided to take the plunge and move to ezyVet.
A carefully planned implementation process ensured a smooth transition. During go-live week, a squad of three ezyVet implementers joined the Sunbury Animal Hospital team on-site to assist with the technical setup and staff training, mitigating potential disruptions and ensuring a seamless transition for staff and clients alike.
Automatic updates, minus the disruption
From an operational point of view, one of the most significant benefits of moving to ezyVet has been access to automatic software updates. Previously, Sunbury Animal Hospital worked with a third-party IT team to manage system updates - a process that was laborious and prone to issues.
“When you’re on a server-based system like DVMAX, any kind of update is pretty brutal,” explained Sunbury Animal Hospital Executive Director Jamie Doering. “When we had to do an upgrade, we pretty much knew that the system would go down the next day, or something wouldn’t be working right. With ezyVet, it’s really nice to have those seamless updates just happen, and we can move on!”
Now, Sunbury Animal Hospital receives updates on a bi-weekly basis. Updates are installed automatically behind the scenes, ensuring the team always has access to the latest features with no disruptions to their day-to-day processes.
Cloud-based communication enhances collaboration
In a practice the size of Sunbury Animal Hospital, effective communication is critical. ezyVet provides the team with an arsenal of communication tools, opening up new possibilities for collaborating and accessing patient data in real time.
Heidi finds ezyVet’s memo system particularly helpful.
“The memo system is really helpful. With DVMAX, we didn’t really have a way to get information out to everyone unless we were printing it out on paper. With ezyVet, we can send updates out to everyone and see who read it and who didn’t.”
To further facilitate collaboration, the Sunbury Animal Hospital team takes advantage of ezyVet’s ‘Watching’ feature, which users can enable to automatically receive information about changes made to a clinical, patient, or contact record.
“I like the ‘Watching’ feature. So, if there's a clinical record that I need to keep track of to make sure that medicine gets dispensed or make sure that clients are followed up with, I can just watch it. I don't have to have a million notes all over my desk trying to make sure they don't get lost!” said Heidi.
Reporting consistency is a common concern for server-based practices that are considering moving to the cloud - and Sunbury Animal Hospital was no exception. While Jamie acknowledges that there was a bit of an adjustment period, she quickly came to appreciate the versatility and depth of ezyVet’s reporting capabilities, and has been able to successfully reproduce the reports that she used to generate in DVMAX.
The future
The transition from DVMAX to ezyVet marks a significant milestone in Sunbury Animal Hospital’s evolution. By embracing modern technology and adopting a cloud-based practice management system, the practice has successfully overcome the limitations of outdated systems and positioned itself for future success.
Want to see what ezyVet could do for your practice? Book a demo today to discover how ezyVet could help your clinic save time, drive revenue, and better serve your patients.