Conciliation group reports new rise in financial settlements

A veterinary conciliation group has said the continuing growth of financial resolutions to complaints against practices reflects wider social patterns, rather than specific issues in the sector.

Officials from the Veterinary Client Mediation Service (VCMS) say they have yet to see a substantial jump in complaints despite the continuation of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) process.

But its latest annual report has revealed that 57% of cases were settled financially in 2022-2023, up from 52% the previous year.

Although goodwill gestures and discounts offered by practices account for 43% of the resolutions, the report estimated that fees worth almost £100,000 were paid by clients to settle a further 25%.

‘Social pattern’

But service head Jennie Jones said the overall growth of financial resolutions reflected a wider social pattern that is not unique to veterinary practice.

She wrote: “Societal goodwill and expectations continued to be influenced by the consequential impact of the pandemic and world events.

“In consumer relations, many sectors have reported increased expectations and consumer focus on value for money.”

Overall, the number of cases referred to the service in 2022-2023 rose by just 0.1% to 3,644, with 60% being handled at a preliminary stage.

A total of 84% of cases were resolved – up from 76% in 2021-22 – while the number of completed mediations increased by 4.3% to 795.

Total caseload

But, although the overall proportion rose by one percentage point from the previous year, complaints based on clinical fees still accounted for only 13% of the service’s total caseload, exceeded by cases of both care standards (57%) and customer service (20%).

The report said: “Complaints are rarely about costs alone. Qualitative insight indicates that client concerns about fees and charges are often multi-faceted.”

The document largely predates both the launch of the CMA’s review of companion animal services last September and its subsequent decision to proceed with a market investigation in May.

Mrs Jones acknowledged that increased workloads in March, April and May were likely to be connected to the process but stressed they had not seen “significant spikes” as a result of it.

Activities

She added that the service was not anticipating a significant jump this year due to activities that are already taking place within the sector.

But while overall case numbers were largely steady, the report does identify significant fluctuations between individual categories of complaint.

Although cases related to prescription charges were down by 78%, from 18 to four, incidents dealing with invoice errors or allegedly excessive fees were up 64% and 55% to 131 and 200 cases respectively.

However, two of the biggest increases related to failures to update clients, which rose by 85% to 100, and surgical complications, which jumped by 167% from 54 to 144.

‘Encouraging’

Mrs Jones conceded that the figures indicated there was more work for both the service and the wider sector to do on improving communications with clients, although the report did describe a real terms reduction in issues relating to complaint handling and empathy as “encouraging”.

The report also recorded a slight fall in practice engagement with the service from 73% to 72%, although Mrs Jones said more recent levels were running at record levels in excess of 85%.

She also emphasised that staff were not seeing a growth in complaints demanding action against individual clinicians despite some cases being raised “more confrontationally” and increasing public interest in current disciplinary processes.

The number of cases the VCMS referred to the RCVS fell to seven in 2022-2023 from 13 in the previous year.