Prior to Blue River PetCare, the practice had inconsistent PTO policies, no employee healthcare benefits, and no retirement fund options. Keri Webb explains, “I was excited to see where the practice could go with good HR support and a corporate backing. The ability to provide benefits to our staff at a reasonable cost and the ability to change things that weren’t previously working for us have been amazing.” St. Francis team members now have access to a robust healthcare benefits package and the ability to make contributions to a 401k retirement fund with company-match.

By offering a wider variety of employee benefits, St. Francis was in a better position to attract top-tier DVM and support staff candidates to join their team. With better benefits in place and the help of Blue River’s Talent Acquisition team, not only were they able to recruit more veterinarians to work at the hospital, but the right ones, that would help continue to enhance their practice’s culture.

With the help of Blue River’s Operations team, St. Francis has been able to improve inventory management and patient care. Keri worked alongside the BRP Operations team to overhaul the inventory management at St. Francis to ensure the right medications are on-hand for patients, and in the appropriate amount to avoid inventory waste.

In addition to this, St. Francis has been able to care for more patients on a daily basis by streamlining its patient care and client communications protocols. Keri Webb explains, “We’ve been able to get patients in and out more quickly while providing the same level of care for each patient and ensuring everything is properly documented and communicated to the client.”

With more veterinarians on the team, the practice was also able to offer additional specialized veterinary services. One thing is for certain – the St. Francis team is very diagnostic driven. They love to stay up to date on the latest veterinary care technology and offer a variety of advanced services to their patients. Having a larger variety of services allows the practice to provide the best-fitting veterinary care for each individual patient’s needs.

To become more well known in their community, St. Francis teamed up with Blue River’s Marketing department to build their brand recognition and client base. First, the Marketing team helped develop an enhanced online presence for the practice. This started with building a new user-friendly website that was optimized for search engines, like Google, which allows the animal hospital to be easily found when someone is searching online for veterinary care. With the new website in place, Google Ads were implemented to further increase their reach to get potential new clients on their website to learn more about the practice and schedule an appointment. Over the span of a few months, St. Francis had come from page four of Google to page one.

With their enhanced online presence now established, Blue River’s Marketing team helped organize community-focused events for the practice to become better connected with pet owners in Fredericksburg. One of these events was an Open House & Adoption Event – an interactive experience for pet owners to tour the practice, meet the care team, enjoy fun activities for the whole family, grab a bite from a food truck, and adopt pets from local shelters. The BRP Marketing team equipped St. Francis with a variety of vibrant client-facing materials with special offerings to hand out to community members at the event to help increase their client count. Having a consistent presence, whether online or in-person, to promote the veterinary care services St. Francis has to offer has allowed the practice to gain more clients and care for more patients in the community.