RCVS hospital status worth getting??

Re: RCVS hospital status worth getting??

Jean-Paul Schmidt — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:00:51 GMT

[quote user="mel kavanagh"]Sadly my experience is my customers just want cheap treatment.[/quote]

Maybe we have different types of client base but our clients are looking for top quality services at reasonable, not budjet, prices. The majority are insured and those not insured will dip into savings to help treat there pets - and we, I hope are able in most cases to deliver good value for money. I would say that we are always keen to strive for better service provision and hopefully not at the expense of sensible pricing - we would be silly to price our selves out. But I don't think that is likely somehow.

Re: RCVS hospital status worth getting??

Hanna Bennett — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:13:55 GMT

We're in the same boat, currently Tier 2 and considering Tier 3 in the next year or so. I think everyone has different views on the Practice Standards Scheme, but guess we needed to do alot of the paperwork anyway - granted the H&S stuff is brain numbing but at least if you have the protocols in place everyone knows how things should work. God forbid we get any sort of complaint but it would surely help in that situation that we have already shown that we work to a sufficiently high standard.

And Mel, it is interesting (and depressing) to hear your viewpoint. We have a cheap and cheerful practice not so far away, and a couple of corporates within hitting distance who run the usual 'value' routines for vaccs and neuters, but one of our vets used to work at one of the corporates, and reported that they never saw the non routine stuff as they were just too expensive for it. Came to us a year or so qualified and had a whale of a time seeing 'interesting' cases for the first time (or at least I hope so, don't think we've scared her off yet!). We do run the Dogs Trust Neutering Scheme which enables folk to get their dogs neutered by paying us £30 while we get a top up from the Dogs Trust - whether this stops folk going to the cheap and cheerful vets I don't know, but it certainly reduces our debt on pyos/caesars/prostatitis dogs.

Re: RCVS hospital status worth getting??

mel kavanagh — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 15:50:20 GMT

Hi All,

I have little time for the RCVS structure. I have been running my own little shop for 10 years, I have 3 certificates and feel i can offer a pretty decent standard for most things. However I don't think I get any credit from the RCVS for my Certs. I even have a vacuum autoclave, but no qualified nurses. As such I feel i would only 'qualify' for the lowest standard practice.

Over my time I have ended up just lowering prices for routine spays etc. just to stay in the game with local competition whose USP is being cheap. And the punters love it! They are packed out all the time, c20 spaces in their carpark. I used to put catheters in my cat spays, pethidine/mrphine and acp premed, thio/propofol induction, onto gas, pulse oximeter and heated operating table. analgesia, collar and home on a few days of nsaids, all for £46.50.

Waste of bloody time, you just have to compete on price as that is all the punters are interested in, now i just charge £38.50, buprenorphine and acp (no paperwork) and i've deafed the post op nsaid tablets.Punters just as happy and I actually have some coming in my door.

I see absolutely no mileage in spending money on these tiers. Sadly my experience is my customers just want cheap treatment. Sorry for being so negative but that is what I have been seeing day in, day out for pretty well 10 years now.

Bitch spays? About £80-90 since that is the price locally.

Good luck on your deliberations but for me it's just a waste of time and money.

Re: RCVS hospital status worth getting??

lisa phillips — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:18:15 GMT

sorry this doesn't answer your question but am in a similar posiiton deciding whether it is worth becoming accredited at all. We are definately up to tier 2 standard but it does seem like an awful lot of hassle and expense to jump through the paper trail hoop to get the piece of paper to say what I'm not sure any of our clients care about anyway - so any coments on this would also be gratefully recieved too - thanks