You may have heard the exciting news: Instinct has released our new full veterinary practice management platform! 🥳🎈
It’s built directly out of our meticulously designed workflow platform, and it’s been running early adopting hospitals for several months.
We know what you’re thinking: the last thing the world needs is more practice management software with more of the same.
We’re with you there. That’s why we’re building something different.
Is it full practice management software (and more)? Absolutely. But it’s also anti-practice-management-software. The whole approach needed a dust off, so we started from scratch. Think of it as a do-over. A rethink. A fresh start. A revolution.
It’s an ambitious task, and we’re often asked what made us take it on. To answer that, I thought we’d pull back the curtain a bit.
📜 The Background
Over the holidays, I realized something amazing: It’s been 10 years since I started my adventures in improving veterinary hospital operations and software.
My (perhaps unhealthy) obsession began when I was a lime green veterinary intern.
That year I quickly fell in love with the emergency room. But I entered the profession just as practices were transitioning to digital systems en masse, and my ER love was severely clouded by the inefficient technology systems we were being handed.
Early on, I recognized what many are now realizing: poorly designed software systems are taking an unacceptable toll on our industry’s trenches: our professional sustainability, our personal lives, our businesses, and ultimately our patient and client care.
A few years ago, I remember looking back and thinking that after nearly a decade of this widespread struggle, nothing. has. changed.
🤬 It Never Should Have Gotten Here
Fast forward to today: Even in the most progressive centers, I’ve calculated that we spend 80% of our days clicking through software.
Is this why we all got into the veterinary profession?
Years ago, I vividly recall a sad and complicated case in the middle of a long shift. There I was, staring at the computer, feeling hopeless, and something clicked: our software was greatly affecting patient care. 💡
It made our eyes hurt, set us up for errors, and left us little time with our patients and clients, let alone time to bask in the enjoyable moments of our profession that sustain us all.
And what frustrated me the most was all the things our software could do but wasn’t.
👉 Seasoned practice owners and operators understand the following secret: as goes the veterinarian, so goes the practice—not the other way around.
That’s why software systems should first and foremost make the veterinary team faster, more accurate, and more in touch with all the available information.
Truly innovative software has the unique opportunity to help veterinary professionals communicate with each other, catch errors, discover new treatments, illuminate previously hidden clinical patterns, get through daily paperwork faster, and ultimately unleash an army of in-practice researchers who can actually push medicine further.
🐣 Instinct Treatment Plan
By 2011, very frustrated, but with new clarity, I decided to do something about it, thus kicking off a long journey of learning everything I could about software development and the current medical software landscape.
In 2017, we proudly launched Instinct Treatment Plan. Since then, our platform has pioneered what we think is the start of a breakthrough for workflow, efficiency, staff happiness, revenue capture, and patient care for more than 25,000 veterinary professionals in state-of-the-art veterinary hospitals around the world.
Still, the most frequent request we hear is for Instinct to do more—to help you manage every aspect of your practice.
In 2019, several of our hospitals were searching for new software. They asked if we would build the software of the future—the platform the industry has been dreaming of—directly out of the Instinct platform that they had come to know and love.
They wanted to be a part of that future and so did we. How could we say no?
Over the past year, we got to work and bent the space-time continuum building a full practice software system that can handle even the busiest of centers.
We’re not done, but we think we’re on to the start of another breakthrough.
🛸 What Is Instinct EMR?
Full disclosure: We’re not interested in making any old practice management software.
Software is a modern veterinary hospital’s lifeblood. It sets the tone. And in this day and age, your software choice shapes your culture and determines your business potential.
Practice software is no longer just some scheduling and billing system. It has become the set of critical tools we use to care for our patients—and it’s time to design them that way.
That’s why we’re embarking on the first truly unified platform, turbocharging all things hospital operations through end-to-end patient, client, and referral care, incorporating automated revenue capture and first-of-its-kind decision support.
🖖 Is Instinct Treatment Plan Changing?
Nothing will change for hospitals that like things the way they are.
Our goal is to make Instinct Treatment Plan the best workflow platform for all practices, now and for the future. We’re committed to constantly advancing it too, and that isn’t about to change.
It will continue to be available, running side-by-side with any existing practice management software for the long haul.
🎁 Who Is Instinct EMR Made For?
Instinct EMR is for all types of practices—big and small. Maybe your server is at the end of its life. Maybe you’ve compared practice management software options, and you are underwhelmed.
Or maybe, like many, you seek the best tool for the future, and you see this as the single biggest decision you’ll make for your hospital and its legacy.
In short, if you want software designed for the modern practitioner that can actually make you money, constantly grow with you, make your staff smile, and do it simply, in partnership with an expert company that truly cares about you—that’s 100% Instinct.
💰 What Will Instinct EMR Cost?
Instinct isn’t aiming to be the cheapest software (there are plenty of those already).
Instead, we’re striving for value because we know what you’ve already figured out: the software you choose actually costs way more than the price tag suggests (in time, revenue loss, frustration, errors, staff retention, limitations).
We’ve set out to build something different for our industry, and that obviously carries a cost to build and maintain.
For pricing, we’ve created a more aligned approach. Most modern software charges high one-time fees and a fixed monthly fee.
What are we doing differently? First, we’re charging low (sometimes no) one-time or add-on fees. Instinct EMR will be charged as an all-in-one monthly fee that covers everything, including unlimited use forever. Instead of making this fee fixed, it is a percentage of what we help you collect (ie, your invoice collections).
If you think about it, most software already costs a percentage of your collections. They just guess when they figure out your price, setting a price per user or using some other fixed metric that isn’t as aligned with the natural fluctuations of a veterinary hospital.
With this pricing structure, we only get paid when you do, so you know that your success will be our top priority for years to come.
🆕 When Will It Be Ready?
Great news: It already is! We don’t claim it’s perfect (yet), but many hospitals are already fully using it with glee.
We’re rapidly adding new, innovative features as we go and view this as just year 1 in our journey to solve this problem for our industry.
Our approach is unique. We view our hospitals as true long-term partners. This means we’ll be there to constantly listen, grow, improve, consult, and support you with innovative tools. And in the process, you’ll be working with a company of veterinary colleagues.
In summary, we’re in this with you, and we built Instinct because we’re like you.
We hope you’ll join us.🧠
Interested in Instinct EMR? Check out our new website and sign up for a demo!
