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Forging working relationships across the practice to deliver standards of care.

Continuity of care, consistent management, cow health records.
Continuity of care is a well-understood phrase in the vet world, and it plays an important part in both clinical governance and client experience. Using VetIMPRESS supports continuity of care as it enables consistent communication across the practice team about what is going on with individual farms or animals.

There are a number of factors which can lead to a different or new member of the practice becoming involved in a case or call-out, some of which are outside of the practice control, so having a system in place which enables access to up-to-date information ensures continuity.

Improving day-to-day efficiency

Chris Sansom (Head of Customer Operations for Farm Vet Systems, within Vetoquinol) discusses how VetIMPRESS, can improve day-to-day efficiency, collaboration and support vets in maintaining good standards of care.

“If a vet is called out to see a cow and records in VetIMPRESS the work completed, their colleague can see that information when they visit that same animal two days later,” says Chris. “Farmers really appreciate that continuity of care and will often ask for a particular vet because they trust them and know they understand the farm. However, this is not always practical, so the alternative is having tools and systems that allow and support continuity of care across the team.”

VetIMPRESS also has the capability for farmers to give vet practices consent to see their farm animal data. This is important in the light of recent changes to how veterinary practices consider an animal to be under their care.

In small animal practices, this is straightforward. A dog owner visits a practice, and a record is kept of every time the dog is seen and what vaccinations, medicines or treatment it is given. It is clear from the client and the vet’s perspective that the animal is under the care of that practice.

With farm animals, it tends to be non-patient specific; a herd or flock is under the care of the practice, but how is that made explicit? VetIMPRESS makes it clear and explicit.

“For farmers, there’s a clearly defined way within VetIMPRESS to confirm that they accept their animals are under the care of a vet practice and give the practice access to their information,” says Chris. “The system links to the government database for that farm and then the vet practice has access to all the individual animals recorded on that farm.”

Maintaining high Practice Standards

UK veterinary practices are assessed every four years against RCVS Practice Standards aimed at promoting and maintaining the highest standards of veterinary care.

“From speaking to customers, it’s fairly universal that many of them see RCVS Practice Standards as a significant driver for change,” says Chris. “They want a more efficient solution to maintaining their current standards and/or the opportunity to achieve a higher standard without significantly increasing admin.”

VetIMPRESS provides a process-driven solution and is helping vets achieve higher levels of Practice Standards in several important ways. One area in which it enables them to follow best practice is recording surgical consent. Whenever a vet performs surgery on a farm animal, they should record surgical consent. Currently, vets might ask farmers to sign a paper consent form, which is not practical, or they may speak to the farmer and obtain a ‘cover all’ consent. VetIMPRESS provides the ability to digitally record surgical consent on farm at the time of the procedure in a way that is more in line with RCVS guidance.

“Vet practices will have adopted a mechanism by which they record surgical consent which may be acceptable to an RCVS assessor,” Chris explains. “However, it may not be best practice according to the RCVS guidelines.”

Chris also points to the example of the need for consent for the use of medicines prescribed under the cascade.

“Assessors will want to see evidence that medicines used off-label have been clearly identified to farmers and that informed consent has been obtained for their use,” says Chris. “RCVS guidelines say that it is not acceptable to use an all-embracing general lifelong consent for off-label medicines. VetIMPRESS provides a best-in-class digital solution for recording consent and adhering to the guidelines.”

The system can also assist vets with different aspects of clinical governance by allowing them to record cases in enough detail, so they are able to regularly review outcomes and adapt the way they practice.

Vets have their own way of recording the work they do, and this often involves entering information into a practice management system. For example, if a vet performs a caesarean on a cow, they may record which client it was, what they did, any medicines given, and the cost of those medicines and treatment. What they won’t have is the individual patient records for each cow.

“With VetIMPRESS, vets have the ability to go to a farmer client’s records, identify the actual cow with its unique official ID, and record all the clinical information they need against it,” says Chris. “Not only does this potentially allow vets to audit their own clinical services, but it also enables them to contribute to wider industry research on evidence-based practice.”

Enabling informed treatment decisions

Having access to individual animal records can help vets make better informed and more effective decisions based on not just what they see in front of them on farm, but on precise data. For example, if vets are treating mastitis, and they have access to lab data from milk samples and on which pathogen they’re dealing with, they can make an evidence-based decision.

This ties in with the drive to ensure the appropriate use of medicines on farm. Alongside enabling vets to make precise decisions and administer the right treatments, VetIMPRESS helps vets achieve Practice Standards around medicines.

While a practice management system will enable vets to record information like product type, category, date, and batch numbers, VetIMPRESS does all of this while allowing the vet to know the history of the animal they are treating.

“It’s easy to see how all of this joins together,” says Chris. “If you have farmers willing to share their animal data and vets can record everything they do against an individual animal, you can understand how this leads to better outcomes, including being able to treat an animal appropriately.”

VetIMPRESS also assists with the labelling of medicines. There are existing systems which allow labels to be produced, mostly these are located in the vet practice and are used mainly for items which are pre-dispensed to the farmer. VetIMPRESS enables on-farm dispensing.

“When a vet is on farm and they’re having to make a treatment decision and dispense from their own mobile pharmacy in the back of their car, those drugs should be accompanied by a detailed, fully compliant label,” Chris explains.

“VetIMPRESS allows vets to produce and print a label there and then. I don’t think there are too many tools out there which allow vets to do that.”

There are plenty of ways in which VetIMPRESS helps vets achieve high Practice Standards and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

“Ultimately, using today’s technology with tailored software can make mundane tasks easier and less onerous, leaving vets with more time to push their boundaries clinically and spend more time with their farm clients,” says Chris.

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