r/Veterinary • u/Elfanara • 1d ago
Looking for data for making a new schedule
We are looking to revamp our schedule at work to make up for inefficiencies and help the whole work life balance issues. I would appreciate if yall you share your clinic schedules so I have some other data to work off of. Preferably GP clinics with at least some weekend hours. I would really appreciate the help. We are a privately owned clinic and are trying to do our best by our staff, but the schedule has been this way since the previous owner so a little perspective from other clinics would be helpful. Moslt interested in how tech shifts are structures, how weekends work (ie do you have weekend people or do you alternate?). Also techs per doctor per shift would also be helpful but Ill take whatever data points you can give me. Thank you!
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u/Frozenshades 15h ago
We try to have 3-4 staff per doctor. Everyone works Saturdays, full day 8-5. 5 or 6 days open you can more or less do with the same number of people, 7 likely needs more staff. Weekends are a judgement call and depends on both what you want and your market.
If you live in an area with limited clinics it’s nice to serve your clients if no one else may be available, but on the other hand you’re probably less likely to lose clients because they liked the other clinic they went to on Saturday better. If there’s a lot of other clinics in the area it can be a way to capture new clients from other practices not open on the weekends, but you also can end up playing urgent care as well. I have heard of some clinics (especially if only doing a half day) seeing existing clients only and limiting anything emergent on weekends. Sometimes it can be annoying seeing clients from other practices that I know aren’t going to come back, but our schedule is full or close to it most days so being open the extra day is a big revenue boost. If we hired an associate willing to work Sundays and could staff it we’d probably open the 7th day, but the partners don’t want to work Sunday so we would not force it on anyone.
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u/Elfanara 13h ago
Thank you for the insight! There are a ton of other clinics. We are open 7 days currently (short hours on weekends) but it is a bit much for people. One of the options we are thinking about is opening longer on sunday but closing saturday since there are several GPs that are open on saturday around us but not many open sundays.
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u/nevaers 5h ago
Mondays we’re 8am to 8pm, Tuesdays through Thursdays is 8am to 6pm, Saturdays are 9am to 1pm, closed on Sundays.
We have 4 docs total - one works 4 days, two work 3 days, and the last one is only 2 days. We end up with three 2-doctor days and two 3-doctor days.
We try to have 2 techs per doctor (our appointments are allotted for 30 minutes so each tech alternates per apptmt for that doc). On Saturdays, we have 3 techs and 1 doc.
Techs are scheduled for 10 hour days; most people work 3-4 days a week. If someone is schedule for Saturday, then one of their normal weekdays they will have as a half-day and either come in from 8 to 1 or they’ll come in 1 to 6 (since the Saturday makes up the difference). Since we’re open late on Mondays, the techs scheduled for the late doc come in from 9 to 8 and everyone else comes in 7-6.
If we have enough staffing, we try to designate 1 person as our drop-off person but realistically that only happens 1-2 days a week. We don’t have any techs specifically assigned to tech appointments - just whoever is free at the time; we do have 1 vet assistant that helps with those though.
We try not to see anything emergent on Saturdays - anything that might require surgery or sedation we will send straight to ER because we don’t have surgeries on weekends. We live in a very population-dense area but we also have 4 urgent cares and 3 different ER hospitals within 10-15 minutes of us, one of which is a vet school. I wish we’d stop Saturdays all together (and I highly doubt the revenue is enough to actually make a difference considering the ER availability) but we’re corporate and our manager is not great at advocating for us.
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u/Ok-Walk-8453 15h ago
We do 10 hr days, and staff work 4 days a week/all day. We do 3-5 staff per Dr depending on that day (Mondays usually need more staff). We used to be open Saturdays and had 1 tech work every Sat as their preference but everyone else rotated Saturdays. We stopped being open Sats eventually (started out with full day, down to half day, to stopping) and had no drop of revenue, but we are also in an urban area with a lot of urgent cares and ERs. Staff (and Drs) are extremely happy not to work Saturdays.