Practice Profile: Hello Vet

The results of the ongoing Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into the small animal veterinary sector will not be known until late next year.

Whatever the investigation’s findings, however, the fact it  was launched at all suggests a significant proportion of the UK’s pet-owning public feel short changed when it comes to the value they receive from their vet practices.

That much was crystal clear from the vet-bashing vitriol served up on countless radio phone-ins and TV talk shows in the days after the CMA’s probe was confirmed in May.

Much of that febrile atmosphere and unhelpful noise has dissipated now the CMA has begun its work, which seems largely centred around the regulator’s concerns about transparency of pricing, transparency of ownership, and transparency of referral and other auxiliary services.

However, transparency has not always been a strong point for a sector that has too often struggled to find effective ways of showcasing the real value it provides to pet owners.

And that’s exactly what Oli Viner and his team are trying to do at Hello Vet in Hackney,  where transparency is not just about how the practice is run – it’s about how the practice has been built.

Back to front

A legacy of its previous life as a place of worship means the practice frontage features a series of full-length windows – two of which have been incorporated into the design to create “street view” consult rooms that allow anyone walking past to see vets and nurses at work. Oli believes it’s the perfect showcase for a practice seeking to highlight and promote the value of small animal veterinary care to an increasingly cynical pet-owning public.

He said: “One of the things about this practice is you’ll see there’s glass from the front, all the way through to the prep area. We don’t believe in the term ‘out the back’ – it’s a banned phrase at Hello Vet. We want to live our values of openness and transparency, such that even if you were just walking past on the street, you can see the clinical team working hard to deliver the best care for the pets we treat. We’re not hiding anything.

“When a pet leaves their owner, it’s scary for both parties, which is why we try and keep pets and their owners together as much as possible.

“We’ve got an opportunity to realign pet owners and clinical teams by truly engaging owners in their pet’s care journey. Everything we do is focused on how we can improve outcomes for the pets that we treat. It is an uphill struggle to engage owners if all the most amazing work is being done behind closed doors.”

A warm welcome

After stepping from the bustling pavement and through the rather impressive frosted glass entrance, clients are greeted by a spacious reception area that is bathed in an abundance of natural light. The brand’s mustard yellow has been used throughout the large and airy space, which also features an abundance of oak – from the seating areas to the chunky shelving and table tops.

Evidence of more solid joinery is in the cat waiting area, which is laid out immediately to the right as clients enter the building. The dog waiting area is located further down on the same side and features a pick and mix treat station, and clever wooden dividing structures that also serve as hideaways for nervous dogs.

A big part of the Hello Vet’s “open house” philosophy is to welcome clients, should they decide to stay for a few hours while their pet is receiving treatment. To this end, there are purpose-built co-working spaces and excellent wi-fi for hot-desking London pet owners to plug back into the world of virtual work while they wait.

But the welcoming and open philosophy doesn’t end with the reception area – it is a concept Oli and his design team have tried to weave into all areas of this impressive 3,500 sq ft practice.

The door through to the consult rooms is clear glass and allows clients to see through to the street view consult rooms. This transparency extends to the clinical spaces, too, with the central prep area also featuring a floor-to-ceiling glass frontage, meaning clients are given a rare view straight into the bustling clinical heart of a veterinary clinic.

Such openness would not be welcomed in a lot of veterinary practices, but Hello Vet head of nursing Belinda Andrews-Jones is convinced that needs to change and that the approach is one that benefits both owners and their pets. She said: “The way the practice has been built and the way it has been set up to run is a fundamental shift, but it’s something that I think other practices should do.

“There is a real culture in the veterinary sector of shutting the owners out and hiding things away, but it makes no sense. Many owners are more relaxed if they can remain close to their pet, and it reduces complaints.

“We are seeing strong anecdotal evidence that pets recover faster and go home more quickly when their owner is present. We will be collecting that data to see the impact this approach has and provide an evidence base to show it works.”

Transparent tech

With a horseshoe-shaped footprint, the practice curves round through the prep area with cat and dog wards – both featuring multi-function Casco kennelling – opening on to this big central space. The pair of large tub tables have been vinyl wrapped to keep with the colour scheme, and demonstrating the investment into areas that would traditionally have been considered back of house.

An imaging suite is situated off this central area, featuring digital radiography x-ray and a full-sized ultrasound machine, while a large screen in prep has been installed to ensure all patient records are visible in real time – technology in clever ways at Hello Vet to enhance transparency of value and service for clients, and improve patient care and outcomes.

While the practice does use some off-the-shelf components, much of its tech is bespoke, as Oli – who is also a full-stack software developer – has developed a number of systems himself to help create the clinical flows he wants.

He added: “We use some off-the-shelf components like our Covetrus Ascend PMS and then we build on top of it. We have a custom Chrome extension, which allows us to build the functionality we need. For example, our payment system runs through the extension, as well as our treatment plans.

“Every visit generates an internal task that the nurses pick up to create a treatment plan for the owner. The nurses take the vet’s visit notes and then put them into the Chrome extension. We then use a bespoke AI pipeline to create a clinical report for laypeople that is automatically sent out to clients via Digital Practice.

“This means that by the time you get home after your visit we have sent you a PDF report on WhatsApp, which says what you came in for, what we found, what the plan is and what treatment you’ve received. This is all in plain English and it has gone down hugely well with owners.

“Another thing we do is ensure that every patient gets an estimate before they come in and that is also about transparency and openness around costs. When it’s time to pay, either we can send them a payment link to WhatsApp, they can use Apple or Google pay on their phone, or we’ve got our card machines in person that are hooked up to the PMS again through our extension.”

Optimised care

Hello Vets also strives to make its pricing as transparent as possible by bundling services together for certain procedures, which makes estimates far more accurate, while a nurse-led virtual triage service has also proved to be a big hit with both clients and clinicians.

Perhaps surprisingly, the practice doesn’t offer an online booking system to ensure an optimised patient care flow, but all clients are offered access to an innovative nurse-led virtual triage system.

Belinda said: “We run an asynchronous triaging system where a nurse will engage with a client to find out a bit more about what’s wrong and then give professional advice and help.

“For us, that makes sure that we can get the appointment booked in the right place to see the right person at the right time, so we can pick up severity and adjust. We can also manage our diaries. If it’s something very complicated, we might give that person longer. If it’s a second vaccination, we might be able to shrink that appointment down and that gives us operational efficiency.

“It’s really important. For the client and for the pets, we’re delivering advice and giving them help when they need it.

Oli added: “In the long run, there is a very sound business argument to it, because it allows us to make sure that we’re optimising the physical care delivery for the animals that need it most. It means that for some pets they don’t need to come in, and we save them a visit. That’s stress reduced, as well as cost reduced for those owners, but it also means we’ve got a space to see a pet that really does need to be seen.

“That kind of optimisation means that we’re delivering the best care that we can, all the time, to the patients that need it most. Even when we still get owners to come in, we’ve been able to provide immediate advice and reassurance, which helps the pet even before we’ve seen them.”

It has also meant that since the practice opened four months ago, more than 300 consults have effectively been turned away and with each consult costing £60, that means Hello Vet has lost more than £18,000 in revenue as a result.

Bucking the trend

The practice is also bucking a strong current trend by not having a subscription offering, but for Oli it is a way of working that is likely to pay handsome dividends for all stakeholders.

He said: “There are a certain number of people who really like to consume services via subscriptions, but we didn’t want to distance ourselves from people who want to dip in and out of pet care, and still get that really high standard.

“We also didn’t want to create a two-tier system where we could only deliver the high standard of care to certain people. Of the areas that we looked to innovate on, we felt that the subscription model was not the most exciting area to focus on first of all.

“Our North Star is improving patient outcomes and we feel the most effective way to do that in the first instance is through innovating around openness, communication, keeping pets and owners together, as well as the clinical care pathways for every pet owner who engages with us. By not having a membership-focused model, we ensure that the barriers are as low as possible to helping as many pets as possible.”

The second arm of the horseshoe features adjoining operating theatres, a large dental theatre, isolation ward and – in the absence of outside space in central London and after much experimentation with different surfaces – an indoor dog toilet featuring real grass.

Completing this section of the building is probably the nicest space in the entire practice – the staff room. With a fridge permanently stocked with free, healthy food and drink for staff, this area could easily pass for one of the trendy bistros that dot this up-and-coming area of east London.

Oli said: “We wanted to make the staff relaxation area feel more homely, so we put in wooden floors and soft furnishings to relax in. One thing we are clear on is that we want to invest as heavily in the staff-only areas as those that clients see – it certainly has not been an afterthought in our design process.

“Our USP is transparency and openness, but also to help develop a way of working that works for everyone – clients, their pets and, of course, our staff – and if we get it right then we will look to expand. The priority for us when we do that is to not dilute what we’re doing and grow too quickly.

“We are at the start of our journey and we are all really excited to see where that journey takes us.”

• VBJ261, Pages 15-19 (December 2024)