Practice Profile: Woodcroft Veterinary Hospital

Like many practices up and down the UK, Woodcroft has faced challenges on an unprecedented scale during the coronavirus pandemic.

Within a few months of moving its referral and A&E services into a new purpose-built hospital site in Cheadle Heath, COVID struck. Hardly the perfect start to life at the practice’s new hub site, but like the many thousands of their colleagues across the sector, the Woodcroft team responded to the crisis with the kind of professionalism and dedication so typical of their professional class.

It certainly helped that the practice had been able to move so many of its core functions out of the old four-storey town house in which it was based to a modern new facility – a move enabled thanks to the financial backing of VetPartners, which bought Woodcroft back in 2016.

Based in a former office block, on the ground floor the new building boasts 10 large consult rooms, and separate cat and dog waiting areas – both adjacent to a large and welcoming reception space. Also located downstairs is the practice’s A&E and hospital department, which provides emergency and out-of-hours cover for Woodcroft’s branch sites, as well as around 20 other practices in the surrounding area – both corporate and independent.

There is also a CT scanner with room for an MRI unit, which is planned to be installed next year. Up the stairs (or via the lift), the first floor houses a surgical suite with six high-spec operating theatres, surgical x-ray and recovery and prep areas. A well-appointed staffroom sits in the middle, while on the other side is a dentistry suite, endoscopy unit, ultrasound, medical x-ray and a cardiology suite.

A team of advanced practitioners offers referral in a number of disciplines, including cardiology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics, soft tissue, dentistry, medicine, dermatology and behaviour.

The site covers around 1,300 sq m over two floors, with much of the planning done before James Farrell took on his current role as clinical director, having joined Woodcroft as a soft tissue surgeon just a few months before the practice joined VetPartners.

He said: “I part-owned a practice in Sheffield, and I left that and came here originally as a soft tissue vet locum six months before VetPartners took over.

“I am now clinical director for referrals, Jenny Walsh is clinical director for first opinion and Dave Tymms is clinical director for the A&E side of things.

“One of the previous partners, Mark Allington – who is now business development director for the north west for VetPartners – did a lot of the planning for this site, but I know both the nursing and vet teams helped with that process also.

“We are very happy with what we have got; there were a few teething issues, but undoubtedly it has really helped us provide a service for the clients that we want to and has given our team a great place to work.”

Life in lockdown

Almost as soon as the team was settled in, coronavirus meant the practice shut down most of its branches, leaving open only the hospital site and the largest of its branch sites in nearby Cheadle.

In March 2020, nobody knew how COVID was going to pan out for businesses or the people who worked for them, and Woodcroft was no different, as James explained. “During initial lockdown, we closed branches, and went into two bubbles with this site and another branch so one could take over from the other should one go down,” he added.

“The absolute core thing was to maintain the A&E service and we managed to do that. It has meant that we’ve had to close some branches to try to either send people home during the day so they can come back and work at night, or just manage the workload to focus on urgent cases during the day to try to reduce potential demands on the night team.”

With two subsequent lockdowns, it has been a monumental challenge at times to balance the needs of clients and their pets with those of overstretched clinicians, support staff and practice administrators.

And with the vaccination programme and the lifting of restrictions raising expectations that life will soon return to something like normal, James highlighted the ongoing challenges that need to be overcome.

He said: “I think the past couple of months have been harder than last year and I think, again, that’s something a lot of people are saying.

“In my opinion, the end of July and most of August are going to be the hardest because of the app and the pinging and self-isolation, but also because the virus is there and essentially people are going to get it more now. And so I think we face the toughest challenge over the next month.

“But so far we’ve managed to maintain our goal of preserving urgent and emergency case provision to the clients and surrounding practices that need it.

“We are fully open now and we’ve been open with all our branches for the past six months, but we’ve had to do things like close one branch to then allow team members to help elsewhere and postpone routine work, and that’s been tricky.

“And I say again, in the past month I think it’s become particularly hard because the clients’ perception is, well, everything’s kind of opening up and it’s okay now, and we’re saying to them, well, actually, you can’t do your castration or we can’t do your neuterings – we need to put off the booster vaccinations for another month just to give us some breathing space so we have appointment slots to see your poorly pets. Otherwise our teams end up staying later and later.”

The right balance

Due to the relatively high number of practices in its local area that have had to close or are working reduced opening hours, business has been good for Woodcroft.

The emergency provision has also been running at peak levels, which has meant revenue has remained strong for the practice throughout the pandemic. But what’s good for business is not always good for the people who have made sure that the show has stayed on the road for the past 18 months. So looking after his team has remained a number one priority for James and the senior management.

He said: “Business-wise, income generation has been great – better than forecast with our budget previous to COVID happening. But that’s definitely taking a toll on the team, and we’re trying to work on ways in which we can reward them and recognise them for what they’ve done.

“I think there’s all sorts of aspects to that. Obviously money comes into it and we have done what we can to reward people with, let’s say, higher than inflation amounts to try to reflect that.

“But, you know, we recognise that in a lot of cases that still isn’t enough with all the other demands that are coming with price rises and other things going on because of what is happening in the wider economic climate, so we are continuing to look at the money side of things for our teams.

“So that’s hard. But aside from that, there’s lots of other things that we’re trying to do in terms of supporting our people – looking at their working hours, that’s been very tough because we just all had to work so much more, but we are looking forwards to see if we can tweak rotas to give a better work-life balance.

“That’s something I think we can work on and are actively looking to make better for our teams to give them time to cool down; trying to have an open door policy so people can come and talk to us about their feelings when they’re not coping; being honest and saying that they were finding it tough as well. We know we don’t always get things right and we don’t have all the answers, but we want to listen. We understand that some days you literally have to drag yourself into work; it’s not great, but credit to the team, they really have done that.”

The right resource

Like practices of all shapes and sizes up and down the country, recruitment is – and remains – a big problem. Brexit hasn’t helped, while the pandemic has put a lot of extra pressure on the existing workforce.

This has forced the senior management team to husband their resources carefully. “We’re trying to help with rotas and work-life balance,” added James. “But that depends on recruiting more people to fill up the gaps, and we are actively doing that and we’ve been relatively successful in that, but it takes time.

“We have to be very careful about making sure people are actually performing the right role – so when we’re struggling for nurses, we’re increasing perhaps reception or auxiliary roles to free up nurses, to be available to do what really nurses have to do.

“That in turn allows the vets to not get distracted doing things that are not within their core role. We try to give nurses a lot of autonomy up to as much as they can have within the RCVS rules for managing anaesthesia and taking control of the cases. And also in the hospital wards with pain management, A&E care, patient plans and time during the day liaising with the vets.

“So I think that makes it a nice place to work for them, because they get a real reward out of doing that, as well as the responsibility, although a degree of stress comes with it as well.”

The future

Assuming the pandemic fades into the background at some point, the practice and its staff will be afforded the luxury of taking a rather longer view.

The past 18 months – by necessity – has been very much day by day and week by week; however, James is already looking forward to a time when he and his team “decompress” and get on with practice life post-pandemic.

He said: “I think really what we want to do is to try to start what we were hoping to do from the start of last year, which is engage more directly with the local practices. They’ve already been using our referral and A&E services, because they kind of have to; but we’d like to really go back to them and ask if we are providing a good service, what else do they want from us and engage on a business-to-business level on those sorts of issues.

“But even before that is just making sure we’ve got everything right for our own staff. That’s the biggest priority. You know, we have gone through an 18-month tidal wave and I think we want it to wash out, just pick up everyone, try to do as many one to ones and talk to people, and just have a reset and a bit of a decompression, see where everyone’s at, and continue to grow and look for better times.”