August Data Review:
Holding Strong
The “dog days of summer” were just that, as August presented another strong month for veterinary medicine! All major KPIs (Revenue, Transactions, ATC, and New Clients) showed growth over August of 2019, and while July was flat, transactional growth was up 2% in August of this year.
While that’s great news, staff burnout at the clinic level remains a concern as teams try to manage more laborious procedures, new client flow, and servicing existing clients.
*August 31st is removed from the graph to normalize the chart as the comparable figure for last year was Labor Day, resulting in wide variations against this year
Revenue is the product of Transactions and Average Transaction Charge (ATC).
August revenue was up 13%, slightly greater than July’s 11%, and below you’ll see a breakdown of revenue category performance for August 2020 compared to August 2019. Notable:
Boarding and Grooming continue to struggle since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak
Pharmacy, Anesthesia, and Dentistry slowed in August when compared to July
Lab was the strongest growth category in July
Professional Services was the strongest driver in August
Transactions can be thought of as volume of visits into the hospital, and that’s obviously where we’ve seen some major negative impacts.
As we mentioned earlier, transactional growth for August was up 2%–which is a promising turn for a category that was flat in July. This perhaps hints at new client slowdown and an easing of pent up demand that occurred during initial lockdowns.
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. August presented the same result, up 11%, slowing slightly from July at 12%. Even so, ATC held strong as a major contributing factor of overall revenue growth in August.
New Client Growth continued strong in August at 11%. New pet ownership during the pandemic as well as shifting of old clients to new hospitals due to capacity issues are the driving force behind new client growth.