AI as a time-saving tool is a nice idea, but vague claims about what it can do don’t mean much in a real-world veterinary practice setting. A more useful way of thinking about time savings and AI in veterinary practice management software is to ask: What would you do with one more hour each day? Here is a look at what you can achieve using modern veterinary practice management software with practical AI tools, including where your team’s time actually goes throughout the day, and how a few seconds or minutes of time savings in veterinary practice can add up to an hour or more each day.
Where does the time go?
How much time do veterinary team members spend on various tasks each day? Here’s a breakdown from our research:
- Veterinarians and technicians: Clinical team members spend roughly two minutes reviewing patient histories and four minutes writing notes for each consult. Each piece of information they must manually search for in the record adds another 90 seconds.
- CSRs: Reception team members handle more than 100 daily client interactions, including appointment booking, inquiries, intake, and payments, with each lasting at least one minute.
- Practice managers: Leaders can lose 60 to 70 minutes each day to low-value administrative tasks such as cleaning up reports, troubleshooting inventory, and managing payments.
Shaving just a minute or two off of these tasks can result in significant time savings in a veterinary practice over the course of a day.
Time savings for medical staff
Clinical staff used to spend much of their time documenting notes by hand, then later with a keyboard and mouse. Now, thanks to AI scribing technologies, teams can spend their time hands-on with pets and talking to clients.
Vets can reduce their average charting time from four minutes to roughly 30 seconds by editing and reviewing an AI-generated medical note. Over a caseload of 20 patients per day, that adds up to 70 minutes of time saved. AI-generated histories and medical summaries reduce the time spent scrolling per case from a few minutes to nearly zero, adding back another 40 minutes.
Adam Wysocki, founder of the veterinary software comparison website VetSoftwareHub.com, advises veterinarians and practice leaders on choosing software that addresses their daily pain points. He noted that getting SOAP notes done faster is often a primary goal.
“When you're talking about AI and scribing, one of the huge advantages is it really cuts down on the take-home work that a lot of doctors have,” said Wysocki. “Listening in on the appointment and then interpolating that into an actual SOAP note is an incredible time saver for the doctor.”
Andrea Crabtree, BS, CVPM, SPHR, PHRca, FFCP, founder of practice management consulting firm FurPaws Consulting, recalled a client who tried a scribe after another associate enjoyed the benefits.“He tried it and saved two hours every day,” she said. “I asked, ‘What are you doing with that time?’ He said, ‘I'm actually getting home on time and having dinner with my wife and kids.’”
Some vets worry that adding an AI tool and spending less time charting will pressure them to see more patients each day, but that’s not the primary goal of using AI for time savings in veterinary practice. “When you add AI to your everyday life and practice, it’s so that you can spend more time with your clients, spend more time with your family, and write better medical records,” said Crabtree.
Time savings for CSRs and administrative staff
Wysocki shared a scenario that plagues CSRs and clients alike: the checkout bottleneck. “You walk up to the CSR, you have your credit card out, your dog's doing circles because he's excited, and the CSR says, ‘We just have to wait for them to put in your charges,’” he said. “AI scribes can shorten that window so it's almost instantaneous. You walk out, and the CSR has everything they need to check you out quickly.”
Administrative work is a target for future AI. “I think we'll see a lot of interesting work in the future around AI intake, form completion, and data validation and transfer from digital forms to the PIMs,” said Wysocki.
Crabtree is a proponent of using AI to build templates that facilitate time savings in veterinary practice. “If you do something more than once, create a template for it,” she said. “Use AI to build that template, whether it be for surgeries, treatment plans, or prescription labels. When your vet is in an exam room educating a client, record them, have AI type it up, and then use that content for email newsletters, social posts, or client handouts.”
Adopting AI
The veterinary industry is notorious for resisting change. However, Crabtree thinks practices that welcome progressive change will be better equipped to succeed. “The more we embrace change and realize that AI is the future, the more relevant we will be to our clients,” she said.
But how an AI tool functions and whether it speeds up or slows down existing workflows is key to a clinic’s decision to use it. Built-in tools require fewer clicks and leave less room for error, while add-ons may require extra steps, copying and pasting, and potential security concerns.
“Veterinarians get a bad rep for being slow to adopt technology, but these are some of the most innovative people that you'll ever meet,” said Wysocki. “The problem is that veterinarians are slow to adopt technology that slows them down and creates extra work for them. AI solutions that eliminate steps in workflows are going to be a game changer for busy practices.”
Save an hour a day with Provet
Using conservative time estimates, our research shows that teams can easily save an hour each day (and possibly up to three hours) using cloud-based veterinary practice management software with targeted AI features. What will you do with an extra hour?
Provet’s suite of clinical AI tools includes scribing, summarization, and other techniques that lead to time savings in veterinary practice. Schedule a demo to see it in action or learn more about our comprehensive software features and integrations.
