September Data Review:
Summer Closes Strong
September data has revealed last month to be one of the of the strongest for the veterinary industry since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with all major KPIs (Revenue, Transactions, ATC and New Clients) showing growth. While July and August were a bit sluggish in transactional growth, September had a 3% increase.
Unlike Septembers past where veterinary medicine typically saw some slowing with the start of school, the fact that many students did not head back to the classroom as usual this September may be a contributing factor to this upswing.
This sustained increase in business also means that staff burnout at the clinic level continues to be a concern. Many practices are reporting that teams are struggling to manage new client flow while maintaining service levels for existing clients.
*September 7th is removed from the graph to normalize the chart as this was labor day, showing while variations to comparable day last year.
Revenue is the product of Transactions and Average Transaction Charge (ATC).
September revenue was up 16%, up from August numbers and is only second to June for largest revenue growth since COVID-19 first presented itself. Below is a breakdown of revenue category performance for September 2020 compared to September 2019.
Notable is that Boarding and Grooming continue to struggle since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, while Laboratory, Surgery and Imaging saw dramatic increases over the prior year.
Transactions can be thought of as volume of visits into the hospital, and that’s obviously where we’ve seen some major negative impacts.
Transactional growth for September was up 3%, the strongest upturn outside of June since the start of the pandemic. It’s another promising indicator of the overall volume coming through veterinary doors, whereas July was flat and August was only slightly up.
Average Transaction Charge is the average amount spent during a visit.
ATC is the only key metric that has maintained positive growth each month since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, and September was no different, up 13%. Strong growth in high ticket revenue categories like Imaging, Surgery and Laboratory helped to drive strong ATC growth.
New Client Growth continues strong with September up 15%. New pet ownership during the pandemic and shifting of old clients to new hospitals due to capacity issues continues to be the driving force behind this KPI.
Be sure to read our other monthly data writeups on iVET360’s dedicated COVID-19 site to see how your hospital is comparing to the industry during the pandemic.