July Data Review:
Keeping Your Head Above Water
July’s data continues to present a strong rebound in veterinary medicine, another month of nearly all major KPIs – Revenue, Transactions, ATC, and New Clients – showing growth over July 2019.
The strong July KPIs presented challenges at the clinic level, however. Many clinics are struggling to keep up with demand, and teams are getting burned out. Some clinics are not able to accept the influx of new clients while meeting existing client demands. All the growth is great, obviously, but you’ll want to make sure your staff is not getting burned out and you are instituting supporting methods while the demand continues.
Revenue is the product of Transactions and Average Transaction Charge (ATC).
July revenue was up 11%, representing a slightly slower uptick than June’s growth at 17%. New pet ownership, coupled with processing pent-up demand, seems to be the driving force behind continued strong revenue growth.
Below is a breakdown of revenue category performance for July 2020 compared to July 2019. Boarding and grooming continue to struggle since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Dietary foods are continuing to struggle as well, possibly because of clients burning through inventory they stocked up in March/April, along with a potential push to online pharmacy purchases. Similar to June, the strongest revenue growth categories were Laboratory, Surgery, and Imaging.
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 July was about even at -1%, down from 3% growth in June. With most hospitals continuing to offer curbside care and the inefficiencies this presents, strong transactional volume is contributing to staff burnout.
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 July is no different at 11% growth. With sharp increases in revenue categories like Laboratory and Surgery and seemingly greater compliance with curbside care, it is no wonder why ATC is seeing such strong growth.
New Client Growth continues its positive trend in July. New pet ownership during the pandemic and the shifting of old clients to new hospitals due to capacity issues is the driving force behind New Client Growth.
Be sure to keep up with our daily stats on iVET360’s dedicated COVID-19 site to see how you are faring against the rest of the industry. We also invite you to take advantage of three complimentary months of our Pulse reporting platform so you can more easily and accurately monitor your business and navigate this difficult time.