Integrated payment processing saves veterinary hospital time, reduces manual data entry

An all-inclusive veterinary hospital

Birch Island Veterinary Center is a Jacksonville, Florida-based veterinary hospital offering all-inclusive medical, surgical, and dental care, as well as boarding, day care, and grooming services for dogs, cats, and other small pets.

The Center was founded by Jacksonville native Deanna Greer, DVM, DABVP, in 2018. Since its beginnings, Birch Island has built a staff of more than 45, including five veterinarians: three full-time and two part-time.

Kristin Reed, the Center’s Hospital Manager, is key in keeping the practice operating smoothly and efficiently. She is the decision-maker when selecting the business and financial solutions for the veterinary center. As Kristin describes it, “[Dr. Greer] always says, ‘you do [the business part] and let me practice medicine, and we’ll be good to go.’”

As part of Kristin’s role in managing the business, she needed to find a payment processing solution for Birch Island that effectively handled recurring credit card payments, saved the staff time with reconciliation, and eliminated manual data entry processes.

Challenges with non-integrated payment processing solutions

Birch Island is a busy, fast-paced environment, seeing an average of 50 to 60 patients daily. They process more than 100 payments every day. Many of Birch Island’s clients pay a monthly fee for the Center’s wellness plan, which focuses on patient’s individualized preventative care. This accounts for about 500 transactions a month.

Therefore, when Birch Island was looking for payment processing solutions, Kristin said “being able to keep stored payment methods and have them run automatically every month is something that’s really important for us.”

Previously, Birch Island had used Worldpay, a Covetrus integrated payment processing solution, but evaluated and switched to another, seemingly more affordable third-party option.

However, the new non-integrated payment processing solution was ineffective and failed to manage and store recurring credit card payments. Also, this solution did not sync with their office’s practice management software. Kristin found that “other solutions over-promised and under-delivered.”

Eliminate manual data entry and reduce reconciliation time

As a result of using a lower-cost, non-integrated solution, Birch Island employees were left manually adjusting payments. This led to inefficiency and wasted time, plus the manual data entry exposed Birch Island’s bottom line to unnecessary human error.

According to Kristin Reed, “[Our receptionist] was sometimes staying until eight or nine o’clock at night, trying to figure out the difference of 30 cents, and it was just silly.”

The lost revenue capture from the other solution “…was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Kristin, “when we saw what we were losing [in revenue], it was not worth as much as we were spending.”

Birch Island then decided to invest in Covetrus Payments (formerly Covetrus Payment Processing). At the time, Birch Island was already using other Covetrus products, such as Covetrus Comms (formerly Rapport^®, Covetrus Pulse^® (formerly eVetPractice), Impromed^® and the online pharmacy. “All the stuff [Covetrus] offer[s] we pretty much use,” she noted.

Covetrus Payments integrates seamlessly with Covetrus Pulse and Impromed, in addition to Avimark^®.

How the integration benefited Birch Island

Up to $300 of revenue per week was saved

Front desk staff saved, on average, 20-30 seconds per transaction

Practice staff saved on average, 30 hours per month

Saving time for staff and clients

Once the decision to use Covetrus Payments was made, Kristin and Birch Island didn’t look back. The Covetrus team’s approach personalizes the software setup, making it that much easier on Birch Island’s team. Their Covetrus dedicated customer support team “is such a good resource,” says Kristin. “If I have any questions and [they] don’t know the answer, they will find it.”

After the switch to Covetrus Payments, the Birch Island staff quickly saw a positive change in the efficiency of their payment transactions. In comparing the Covetrus solution to those of other vendors, Kristin said, “We’ve tried others, and there’s nothing that works as well as this one.”

This integrated solution saves the team invaluable time and energy, unlocking opportunities for the staff to work on other parts of the business. “It probably saves [our receptionists] at least an hour a day,” said Kristin, “it’s just a little bit less stress and that overflows into everything that we do, really.

“Having the integration, it’s almost foolproof. There’s [hardly ever] an error, and if there is, it’s a lot more easily identified,” said Kristin

Safe and secure payment checkouts

This leads to faster, more secure credit card checkouts for their clients. The checkout process is now seamless—Birch Island’s payment processing is fully integrated with their Covetrus practice management software. Their patients’ data remains within the Covetrus digital ecosystem, a critical component in overall data security and privacy.

For clients with recurring payments, “The stored payment method is probably the best feature for us,” said Kristin.

The results

• Saved staff one hour per day, on average
• Improved recurring credit card payment processing
• Eliminated manual data entry and improved reconciliation time
• Prevented lost revenue capture
• Improved practice data security and privacy standards
• Integrated with Covetrus practice management software

Kristin recommends Covetrus Payments and describes it as “user-friendly, streamlined, simple and effective—all the good things.”

Meet Kristin Reed, Birch Island Hospital Manager

Kristin is instrumental in keeping the practice running efficiently while sharing her kindness & humor with both staff and clients. Born and raised in Boston, MA, moved to Jacksonville in 2004, which is when she found her passion for helping animals and their owners.

Since then, she has been in the veterinary field in various capacities. She combines her managerial, administrative, customer service, and animal care skills together to provide exceptional service to clients & patients while overseeing daily hospital functions.