FAQ
What are your hours of coverage?
Our provided hours of coverage are M- F, 6AM to 7PM and Sat/Sun 6AM to 5PM (CST). This comes to a total of 87 hrs/week. We are available 363 days of the year. The two days we are closed are Thanksgiving and December 25th.
What kind of pricing structure do you have for services?
Monthly fees begin at $2250. Visit our pricing page to learn more.
What kinds of software do you use?
DVMcenter uses a customized software built for the end-of-life services our members provide. This software serves as a customer relationship management system (CRM) and tracks all visit, pet, and client information. It is also used for scheduling by providing a calendar and intake form specific to each practice we work with. Our software provides automated electronic consent forms, online payment processing and tracking, automated confirmation, reminder, and support emails, and clinic notifications. There are also several reports that can be downloaded to help keep track of your practice metrics.
What kind of services do you offer?
We offer full-service phone support as well as several a la carte services such as social media management, software, consulting, and training packages. You can read about our services here.
What types of visits can you schedule?
Our team can schedule euthanasia, cremation care pickups, Quality of Life consultations, tele-medicine consultations, and initial hospice/acupuncture/palliative care consultations. We do request that doctors maintain direct contact with current clients that are being seen for hospice/palliative care and schedule any follow-ups needed.
How do you schedule for me if you are not familiar with my city/location?
Our team does our best to try and schedule visits close together when possible. During the onboarding process, we will help section off the service area in to separate regions, and we encourage you to specify in your appointment calendar if there are certain times you would like to schedule specific regions. For example, you may want our support team to schedule for your furthest region for the first and or last visit of the day to avoid going out of the way during the middle of the day, or avoiding certain regions at certain times of the day due to high traffic areas, etc.
As part of this process, we create a custom webmap for you to post on your website and for our team to use internally. Over time, our team becomes more and more familiar with your service area and works to keep drive-time in mind when scheduling visits.
Can I answer my own phones some of the time while you answer others (like evenings or weekends)?
We have come to find that it is best for our support specialists to answer phones 100% of the time. This way, we will have every conversation documented and each support specialist has access to their information.
Do you offer any metrics to help me maintain important insight into my practice's growth?
Our software also provides several reports that can help you keep a bird’s eye view on your business. Our reports include:
- Incomplete Visit Reports- This report tracks visits have not yet been completed in Buddy, it is important to complete visits as soon as possible so our system can notify the client’s regular clinics and send along a grief message to the family letting them know we are here for them.
- Pending Visit Report- This report tracks those contacts that we make with clients that have not yet scheduled a visit. This report will give some insight as to why a client has not scheduled such as financial issues, scheduling conflicts, COVID related, etc.
- Visit Detail Report- This report tracks all the scheduled, occurred, and cancelled visits. It also displays visit type, aftercare selected, region, and payments.
- DVMcenter Fees Report- This report, in the form of a bar graph, displays the DVMcenter fee by month. Clicking on an individual bar will allow you to see details about that month’s fee. Our fees are calculated by a visit-based or revenue-based model, and you will pay the lesser of the two.
- Production Report- This report breaks down everything by services, providers, fees, and the number of times a service was rendered. This report can be helpful to calculate production-based payroll or to gauge important metrics for your practice.
- Referring Vets by Visit Report- This is s report listing the referring vets associated with a visit that has been “scheduled” or “occurred.”
- Payment Report- This report tracks all payments and can be filtered by payment status and type.
What kind of training does your team have?
Many of our support specialists have previous formal training in veterinary technology, human services fields, and social work. In addition, we have developed an extensive training program that is focused on compassionate client support, efficiency, and accuracy. During training, support specialists are gradually trained to work independently by first spending many days shadowing our experienced support specialists. Our training program is complete with a video training library with information about navigate our Buddy Software, specialized trainings with our resident licensed veterinary social worker, and continuing education throughout the year with speed training topics presented by our peers.
Why would someone utilize DVMcenter instead of hiring their own team?
Our interdisciplinary team has unique training and experience managing emotional calls, sensitive situations, and complex scheduling. In addition, many practices prefer to work with DVMcenter so that they don’t need to manage their own employees, which includes hiring, performance management, scheduling and processing payroll, training, and setting up infrastructure such as phone and email systems and software programs. For 87 hours of phone coverage, a practice paying $2250 per month spends about $5/hour for our team of support specialists to manage all client communication and scheduling. Using DVMcenter services saves countless hours and thousands of dollars, allowing you to focus on other areas of your practice that need your unique passion and effort.