Click-and-collect orders - remote prescription services

Veterinary clinics have found a way to provide click and collect prescriptions - reducing stock waste, improving cash flow, and increasing compliance. PetsApp allows pets owners to make orders remotely, taking digital payment via the app for the product being ordered at the time of the request.

Every clinic I have ever been involved with running has had a big plastic box at reception. Does yours? The plastic box is where medication goes to expire.

It goes a little something like this:

• A busy vet puts up a prescription,
• An already stretched veterinary team member then goes and counts out the exact amount of medication required,
• If you don’t have the medication in-stock they might even order it in,
• They print out a prescription label,
• They fill out the “collection form” associated with the plastic box,
• And they put the perfectly good medication inside.

The medication stays in the box until it expires. Typically it stays there for some time after it has expired. And at some point it gets thrown out.

Why not cut out the middleman? Go to your pharmacy right now. Take 3 doses of your preferred form of parasite prevention and chuck them out. No, no, wait, I’m kidding, don’t do that. But you get that point.

Or maybe you don’t because there is a key stakeholder involved in the above process that I have missed out entirely. The pet owner. It is the pet owner that has called in to order the medication. It is the pet owner that forgets to collect it. It is you that pays the price in wasted stock and wasted staff time.

It’s not that the pet owner does this on purpose. Think about this in terms of a User Story:

When I… need to order flea medication for my cat

I want to… contact my clinic and order it for collection

So I can… forget to collect it, allow my cat to get fleas, waste the time of my busy veterinary team and add to medical waste

Clearly the above is a hilarious misstatement of your average pet owner’s intentions, even if the outcome is the same. The truth is the pet owner has every intention of collecting the medication when they call you asking for it. They just forget. Life gets in the way. Your process allows life to get in the way, provides no incentive to keep the task front-of-mind, and means pets often miss out on the treatment they need.

Fortunately, hundreds of clinics have found a way to shrink the plastic box, reduce stock waste, improve cash flow and increase compliance. They allow pets owners to make click-and-collect orders via PetsApp, taking digital payment via the app for the product being ordered at the time of the request. The owner is then much less likely to forget to collect the medication, ensuring the pet gets the benefit of the product you have recommended!

It’s super easy to do and increases convenience for pet owners too. Via PetsApp owners can pay securely and in their own time via credit card or debit card but also via Apple Pay. It’s then just a matter of popping in at a time of their choosing to collect. Some clinics are even offering delivery.

Watch this brief video overview to see how it works.