7 Apr 2026
David Harris BVSc, PGCert(VetEd), FHEA, MRCVS and Susie Samuel MA, VetMB, MRCVS explain how practices can best prepare for the Competition and Markets Authority’s rulings on pricing and transparency.
Image: Jacob Wackerhausen / iStock
Following the launch of a market review into veterinary services in September 2023, the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) final remedies were published in March 2026.
The CMA is now expected to make an order by September 2026, with most of the website changes needing to be complete either by then, within three months for large veterinary groups or six months for smaller groups and practices. As all of us in the veterinary or technology world know, that’s not a lot of time, given the detailed requirements in the provisional remedies.
If you would like to avoid the scramble, and substantially simplify your compliance with the CMA requirements, Digital Practice is developing a CMA Pricing and Compliance plugin for your practice website that will automate (and simplify) the process.
As will become clear, compliance with the CMA requirements could be very arduous for practices – especially those with limited administrative capacity or more complex pricing.
Nine suggested remedies will require some degree of change to the practice website. In this article, we’re focusing on Remedies 2b, 2c, 2d and 3 – although 1, 2a, 6, 12 and 13 will also impact your website to some extent.
The biggest single website change is going to be the requirement to publish standardised prices. But this is what the Digital Practice plugin is intended to automate, minimising the need for staff time to build or maintain compliance, with VAT and updates handled centrally.
In addition, for practices or groups with multiple practices, a central dashboard will allow pricing to be automated centrally or devolved to practices, so different prices can be applied to different clinics, if desired.
All prices must list the price the client would reasonably expect to pay, including VAT, any surcharges and all the clinically necessary components; for example, it would not be acceptable to list a dog castrate without the anaesthetic fee, as this is a clinically necessary component of the procedure.
However, every patient is potentially different; therefore, the CMA expects practices to base their prices on a standard case with “minimal” complexity or complications (just as with a low-end estimate). Fortunately, you are also encouraged to explain that if additional complexity or complications ensue, the price may be revised upward.
The plugin will support this approach by letting you set “standard” case prices and, once configured, pull in a basket of components if you are using a “bundle” pricing model (for example, separate fees for surgery, anaesthesia, consumables, and postop checks, all bundled together for a single procedure price).
All the services on the list that you offer to the public must be included. You can only exclude an item if you do not offer that service yourself (although this doesn’t seem to apply to your OOH provider’s fees).
The CMA has decided on a standardised list of patient categories that must be included:
You also need to include the duration of, for example, consultations, and we strongly recommend additional information be published to differentiate your services from other practices.
To make this simpler, the plugin dashboard will automatically highlight missing mandatory items, will permit you to add custom additional fees or even species, and will update daily from the PMS if prices change once all the APIs are configured and in place.
For all six patient types, you must include prices for 36 specific items (down from 47 in the original proposals), ranging from first consultation to animal health certificates to spays and castrates to CT scans. This is, of course, 216 prices in total, all of which must be complete and kept up to date. The final list comprises:
Most veterinary practices that offer such plans already include a fair amount of detail on them, including a list of the plans offered, the included services and service frequency and the overall or monthly plan cost.
Many websites also list the plan’s terms and conditions, sign-up details and even the plan ownership.
However, in addition, veterinary practices will need to add comparison costs (the cost difference for the same services with and without a plan) and a clear explanation of how this was calculated (discretionary discounts, for example, must be excluded). The plugin will automatically generate the comparison in a CMA-compliant table, along with an explanation of the logic.
Finally, the specific parasiticides included within the plan need to be listed, linked to the following.
In this section of the pricing page, you will need to list your most commonly used flea, tick and worming products. The CMA’s definition includes those that have sold more than 100 units in the preceding year – if there are less than 10 products reaching this level, then the “top 10” must be included.
Each product listed will need to be subdivided by size and dosage, as well as reporting the specific formulation (for example, spot-on, tablet or collar).
There is also a requirement to explain that POM-V drugs are only available with a veterinary prescription and a note advising owners to seek veterinary advice before use – this is a price list, not a menu.
This is a standard module in our plugin, although we will require the practice to tell us their most commonly sold options, so we can select them from the PMS’ API or price list.
The CMA proposals will also require the practice to publicise the client’s ability to request a written prescription for non-emergency medications – on the website and all communications.
This must publicity should also inform clients that “substantial savings are often available from online pharmacies” and link to RCVS material about prescriptions and the VMD’s list of approved online retailers.
While this is beyond the scope of this article, we are already preparing the Digital Practice messaging service to help meet these requirements.
In addition to the ubiquitous privacy and cookie policies, user terms and conditions, and contact details, you will need to disclose the practice’s ownership (which also specifically applies to non-practice websites, such as online dispensaries, if their owner also owns veterinary practices).
Other new requirements include details and qualifications of all staff, details of the OOH provider, any accreditations or awards, and details about your OOH provider.
Finally, the website must contain a CMA-compliant client complaints procedure.
A small practice with good administrators, who rarely change prices, could do this in couple of days’ web dev work. However, every time they change their prices, it would need to be redone – and if these proposals go through, we anticipate most practices needing to make multiple price changes while the market equilibrates. So, if that’s your plan, make sure you’ve read all the CMA documentation and you’re ready for the building work.
However, a practice with dynamic pricing, multiple clinics, branches with different prices, or one that lacks capacity to do the backend admin work, needs an off-the-shelf solution. The Digital Practice website plugin is being designed to work with all common website CMSs, and will utilise APIs to pull prices directly from the PMS.
You will initially be presented with the system’s “best guess”, which you can then manually edit. Once configured, the API will check in with the PMS regularly, and will reflect any changes on the plugin.
While we are always developing new PMS links, there are still some that we do not integrate with. However, we are planning a backup semi-automated approach, whereby you can submit a price list download and we will automatically populate your dashboard. When you change a price, you just need to notify us and we will make the updates for you.
However, to make this work, we need your help.
With any new product, there will be complexities. However, in this case, it’s not actually the plugin that’s complicated; the problem is the data.
In our years of experience working with veterinary practices and PMSs, every PMS codes the same prices slightly differently. They have different API endpoints; sometimes, prices are all in one database as a single fee, but sometimes they are split into sub-components scattered across several.
In addition, every practice structures fees differently; for example, one practice might have a fixed-cost dog castrate per weight (making CMA compliance easy), but another might bill the procedure, anaesthetic, drugs, consumables, and follow up separately (for maximum flexibility). This makes it much more complex to pull all the data together.
So, as we are building this, we are asking for practices to join our closed beta.
This is free, but it will help us to build the logic that will allow the product to integrate with as wide a range of practices as possible. If you use a PMS that we already integrate with, great; if you don’t, also great. If you do everything on paper, please get in touch.
Essentially, we want the widest range of data possible. In exchange, you get the plugin and a chance to help us tailor it so it works for you.
If you’re interested, get in touch. Visit here to join the closed beta.
David Harris graduated from the University of Bristol’s vet school in 2005 and has worked in equine, farm animal and small animal practice. He also worked for a veterinary pharmacy and created digital content for veterinary practices. David now splits his time between teaching veterinary nurses and animal health students at Cornwall College, and is head of veterinary content for Vets Digital.
Susie Samuel is the chief executive and co-founder of Digital Practice, and was a practising vet for more than a decade, with a particular interest in small animal medicine. She is also founder of VetHelpDirect and Vets Digital.