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Katherine Vet Care is a family-owned and operated mixed animal veterinary practice with a history that spans over 30 years. The clinic provides comprehensive veterinary care for a diverse range of animals in Katherine and the surrounding area. Its services include routine veterinary care, emergency services, artificial insemination, and equine.
Sally Trembath is Katherine Vet Care’s practice manager, and she works alongside her veterinarian husband, Rupert. His father, Peter, founded the clinic in the 1990s, and Sally and Rupert aim to take ownership of the practice in 2025.
The clinic has a passion for community outreach and has veterinarians with pilot’s licenses so they can provide essential veterinary services to remote communities in the Gove Peninsula and on Groote Eylandt.
Sally explained that the practice recently started fortnightly fly-in clinics in Gove. “In our first clinic of the year, we saw over 45 animals, and our next clinic is looking very busy too. I think this is going to be a busy and successful venture for us,” she says.
“We’ll be scheduling these alongside monthly visits to Gove, which we’ve done for the past five or so years. We also do large animal care and lots of cattle work on big remote stations in the Northern Territory, as well as small animal care in Katherine, which are mostly done here on-site.”
Katherine Vet Care has used Provet as their wholesaler of choice for many years. “We’ve got a really good relationship with the Provet team,” says Sally. “They’re always helpful and approachable. They always answer the phone or get back to you and follow up on queries.
If there’s ever a question or error, it’s never an issue; they clear it up quickly. They’re also very reliable and can get stock to us in a reasonable timeframe.”
Sally explains that maintaining stock levels is challenging due to the practice’s remote location. She usually places an order on a Friday afternoon, or over the weekend, so it’s dispatched early Monday morning. “It really helps that we get our orders within the week,” she says.
“The Provet team is helpful and will try to put as much of the medication and lightweight stock into the overnight free shipment,” she adds. This gives Sally and her team confidence that they can get the medicines they need quickly, avoiding keeping a lot of valuable scheduled medications in stock and vulnerable to theft.
Katherine Vet Care’s Provet Business Account Manager (BAM), Wayne, schedules regular visits during the year. “Wayne is always easy to get in contact with and I feel more than happy getting in touch with him if I have a question,” she explains.
Sally adds that the order processing team are also very easy to work with. “I often email them with queries or ask for the code for particular items because I can’t find them. They’re all fantastic.”
Sally explains that using the Provet Connect ordering system is great, as well as setting up ordering through RxWorks. “We haven’t done it historically via RxWork. I’ve only become aware of the potential of Provet Connect and RxWorks since I’ve been going to practice management school. It’s something we have to chip away at,” she adds. “We’re definitely not using it to its full capacity, but we see the value. We now also have two laptops we can use remotely, which is fantastic. When we do our remote clinics, we can charge items correctly, add notes, and send emails, all on the spot.”
Sally and her team aim to start scanning barcodes in the near future. “This was recommended at the last workshop we did in Darwin with the Provet team,” she says. “We just need to resolve some issues with our Wi-Fi connection in the clinic. Over time, we’ll get RxWorks set up better with stock control and get everyone on board, which will streamline our operations.”
Sally says Katherine Vet Care finds the Provet PLUS+ loyalty reward program a valuable way of accumulating points to use towards education and training, equipment or software.
“We recently used our Provet PLUS+ points to buy two orthopaedic plating kits and we’ve done six orthopaedic small animal surgeries since we got them. So that has been really helpful.”
The practice has also found value in the products offered in the Covetrus Essentials range, which offers good quality, reasonably priced consumables. “I really like that we can get Metacam 5mg in a 100ml vial bottle, for example. It’s really good because we’re remote and I’d much rather get it in bulk rather than in 20ml bottles, due to freight and timing,” Sally explains.
She’s also satisfied with the breadth of products offered across Provet. “Provet is bringing out more and more products, which is great. I’m always willing to try a more cost-effective option,” she says.
Accessing CCG through Provet has also been extremely valuable for Sally and her team. She attended practice management school for a week on the Gold Coast, followed by an inventory workshop in Darwin.
“I just chip away at what I’ve learned,” she says. “I pick my ideal goals and do five items a week, or whatever’s achievable. I’ve emailed the CCG team on occasion, and they’ve been great at sending me through resources. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved,” she says. “We’ve now got staff contracts and job descriptions on the go, which I’ve been rolling out with new staff. I’m also doing reviews with staff three months and 12 months into their role.”
“And I conducted exit interviews with a kennel hand and two nurses who finished up at the end of last year. It was great to get their feedback, so I could pass it on to the owners and put steps in place to improve,” she adds.
With the help of CCG’s input, Sally understands better why management tools are so important for helping the practice and staff set and achieve goals. “I recommend CCG’s practice management school one hundred percent, it’s definitely worth the investment” she explains.
She adds tongue-in-cheek that she wishes she could ‘steal’ the CCG trainers and have them in her clinic for six months to help steer her and support her staff. “The way those ladies word things sometimes, I’m like, oh, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say!” she adds.
Sally highly recommends Provet as a wholesaler for any clinic and CCG for training and education. “They’ll go the extra mile and help you out as much as they can, whether it be freight or logistics or enquiring about a specific piece of equipment. And for CCG, they’re always contactable and prompt with their responses, and they’re reasonably priced. They’re great,” she confirms.
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This post first appeared on the CCG Blog: Katherine Vet Care: Remote Reach Thrives with Provet and Crampton Consulting Group (CCG)
Josh Littler is the Asia Pacific Marketing Manager at Covetrus Technology Solutions. He has been in the veterinary industry for nearly four years and is driven by providing value to the industry in the form of podcasts, articles, webinars, videos and industry reports. He has a deep empathy for the challenges that the industry is facing and aims to support veterinary professionals through education. Feel free to get in touch with Josh if you’d like to contribute to Covetrus’ articles.
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