How the RSPCA Spends More Time Caring for Animals with Provet

"We want the staff concentrating on looking after the animals, not updating all of our admin at the end of the day. If we can give them time back and actually get more done in that time … that's the goldmine. That's the real win." – Ceri Bower, Digital Project Manager, RSPCA

Key Provet benefits:

• One veterinary record shared across hospitals and centers
• Full animal histories on hand for every adopter, assembled in a click
• Stock control and built-in VMD compliance, replacing paper and spreadsheets
• Finance visibility into drug spend, invoicing, and auditability
• An open API linking Provet with the RSPCA's Salesforce-based Animal Shelter system
• IDEXX and Covetrus integrations

The RSPCA, the world's oldest animal welfare charity, has replaced its unsupported Vet Rescue system with Provet, the all-in-one veterinary PIMS, giving its hospitals and centers a single veterinary record for the first time.

Provet went live across the RSPCA’s four animal hospitals in February 2024 as the veterinary layer of its Animal 360 program, a wider effort to connect systems that had never spoken to each other. The rollout will continue across 14 animal centers that care for a remarkable range of patients: companion animals and horses, farm animals like chickens, pigs, and goats, wildlife, and exotics from snakes and tortoises to the occasional raccoon. The first equine site went live in June 2026, with wildlife centers to follow.

The system the RSPCA outgrew

Before Provet, the RSPCA ran on Vet Rescue: an old, unsupported, Windows-based system where each hospital sat on its own server and nothing talked to anything else. It was slow and unstable, with servers that had started to fall over and a spinning hourglass that stopped staff getting on with their work.

The gaps went beyond speed. There was no inventory control, so stock lived on Excel and Google Sheets, drug records were on paper, and the system was not VMD compliant. Because information was scattered across separate systems, no one could follow an animal's full journey, and pulling together an adoption pack meant hunting across those systems for the history needed.

Why the RSPCA chose Provet

The RSPCA chose Provet after going out to tender in 2023. Provet was one product, not a base system with paid bolt-ons for whiteboards, inventory, and everything else, which made the commercial picture clear. It was also intuitive. As Gary Westbrook, Lead for the Animal 360 Program, put it, "As you went through the demo, you kind of knew what they were going to be doing next, because you could navigate the system quite easily." Where the old system left staff jumping from screen to screen, Provet added structure. "Provet drives compliance. It drives workflow," Gary said.

An open API mattered from the start. The RSPCA did not want to swap one silo for another, so Provet needed to connect to its Salesforce-based Animal Shelter system. A system architect who reviewed it called the result "the best we can possibly ask for in terms of what we get out of the API." The RSPCA chose Provet on cost, scalability, and functionality.

What changed day-to-day

The biggest change is one the animals feel directly. Because the hospitals and centers now share one record, staff can read an incoming patient's full history before it arrives, instead of piecing it together on the day. 

Ceri Bower, the RSPCA's Digital Project Manager, described a case at the Newport center. Checking an incoming animal's record ahead of time, the team saw they needed treatment Newport could not provide on site. Before Provet, that animal would have travelled from Newbrook, the RSPCA's Birmingham hospital, only to be turned around and sent straight back for care: a roughly four-hour round trip, and a stressful disruption, with no clinical benefit. This time the team arranged the right treatment first, and the animal was spared the journey entirely. "From an animal welfare perspective, that's a huge benefit for us — just being able to view that information and make decisions with everybody's interests at heart," she said. 

That kind of visibility depends on the systems actually talking to each other. An open API links Provet to the RSPCA’s Salesforce-based Animal Shelter system, so an animal’s record now follows it from the first call to the national contact center, through treatment, and on to rehoming, instead of living in separate silos. 

The same shared record pays off at the happy end of an animal’s journey. Amy Ockelford, Senior Press Officer at the RSPCA, said it used to be “really difficult to follow” an animal across disconnected systems. Now the full story sits in one place. Assembling an adoption pack, once a manual job pulling treatments, medications, and behavioral notes from several systems, is close to a single click, and “rehoming outcomes [are] more positive, because people will know exactly what they’re taking home.” 

That access is what Ceri values most: "The transparency is probably the overall win for us — being able to have access to all of our data." Everyday admin looks different too. Instead of rummaging through cupboards and paper to plan a stock order, staff run a report and work from it. "They can just click a button and view a report that says what inventory is below alert level … to them, that's just such a gift," Ceri said.

Finance gained visibility it never had, seeing what is being spent and where and invoicing work that used to be written off. As the head of finance put it, "You've now given us all the eyes that we wanted to have all over the data." A monthly Covetrus price update keeps medication pricing current without manual work, and IDEXX integration connects diagnostics to the record.

Adoption was smooth because staff wanted the change. "Once they saw it, once they had the training, it was like: yes, when can we go live with this?" Gary said. Role-based access gives veterinarians, nurses, and supervisors a workflow that fits each of them. Ceri credits Provet's implementation manager by name: "Celia knows us better than we know ourselves. She’s been tremendous to work with and always on hand when we needed her."

With the foundations in place, the RSPCA is moving from delivery into measuring the gains, with reporting maturing and a central pricing tool planned to standardize costs across sites. The team also plans to explore Provet's agentic capabilities, such as AI Scribe and Ask Provet, once the rollout is complete. For Gary, the goal is simple: "Giving time back to the team so they can spend more time with the animals — that's the key thing here."

Want to see what one connected record could do across your sites? Book a Provet demo.

FAQs

What veterinary software does the RSPCA use?

The RSPCA uses Provet, the all-in-one veterinary PIMS, across its animal hospitals and centers as the veterinary layer of its Animal 360 program.

Why did the RSPCA replace its previous system?

Its previous system, Vet Rescue, was unsupported and server-based, with no inventory control, no VMD compliance, and no way to share records between sites.

Can Provet connect to other systems?

Yes. The RSPCA uses Provet's open API to link with its Salesforce-based Animal Shelter system, alongside IDEXX and Covetrus integrations. Explore more of Provet’s integration partners here.

Does Provet support multi-site veterinary operations?

Yes. Provet gives one record across sites with role-based access, so teams can view a patient's history and coordinate care between locations.