Practice Profile: The Woodbridge Vets

Staff: full-time vets 5 ❘ registered veterinary nurses 5 ❘ practice administrators 5 Fees: initial consult £55 ❘ follow-up £52.50

The best stories are often simple and – on one level at least – the story of The Woodbridge Vets is certainly that.

Partners Kyle Eadie and Laurie Barrow meet at vet school in Nottingham, they graduate, they get jobs at a corporate, they leave the corporate and then build their own practice which becomes an almost overnight success – the end.

Except that it’s not the end. In fact, this is just the beginning of the story for two young vets likely to have a big say in shaping the future of independent practice in their East Anglia stomping ground.

But as beginnings go, it’s already been something of a blockbuster.

The first instalment of The Woodbridge Vets story is one of explosive independent growth featuring an all-star cast of happy employees and happy clients, supported by the perfect ensemble of healthy pets and healthy profits.

Since opening just three years ago with the relatively modest start-up budget of £160,000, the practice has tripled in size to 5,000sq ft while a second site, The Hadleigh Vets, came online in September.

So, what’s the secret to their success? As Laurie explained, a lot of it stems from their three founding principles.

He said: “Both Kyle and I were working as clinical directors for the same corporate practice and during that time we worked out that there were three main things you’ve got to do to be a successful practice.

“The first is to get your patient better, make sure you do a good job clinically, make sure you get good outcomes and that you can deliver high-level medicine and surgery.

“The second is making sure clients are happy, which isn’t always guaranteed – even when a practice has done everything right clinically.

“That might be because of how they’ve been looked after or a lack of transparency around pricing, so we knew we had to put our clients first when it came to building The Woodbridge Vets and we think we’ve done that.

“And number three was to make sure the staff are happy by fostering a good work environment. That is an environment where people have rewarding jobs, where the vets have the right support and the best equipment and are busy enough to be doing the things they want to do, and where nurses are doing things that they want to do and getting fulfilment out of their jobs, too.

“And we found, if you put real thought and effort into it and you do those three things correctly, the finances look after themselves.”

And that has clearly been the case. From a standing start and with just Laurie and Kyle working as vets, the practice turned over £1.4 million in its first year, £2.3 million in its second and – with a total of five vets now on the payroll – turnover is on course for around £3 million in 2025.

Perfect planning

But it has taken a lot of work and careful planning to get so far, so quickly. Having both worked at the same corporate practice in nearby Wickham Market, Laurie and Kyle both received a good grounding in how to run a busy practice while also building up the funds they needed to open The Woodbridge Vets.

Kyle already knew the area well having grown up in Suffolk, while moving to East Anglia from the midlands to work alongside his partner meant Laurie also had time to get to know the area – and its pet owners.

But despite enjoying many aspects of their clinical director roles, taking on all the problems of running a practice in return for a set salary was never going to be the long-term option for Laurie and Kyle.

And – like so many other entrepreneurial vets since the pandemic – COVID-19 proved to be a big catalyst for breaking out of salaried work and going it alone.

“Working through COVID was manic for a lot of people in the profession and we were running the practice together – it just started to feel like we were taking on all the problems of owning and running a practice and just getting a salary for it and nothing else,” Laurie said.

“Neither of us particularly liked being held to targets either or being told what stuff we could and couldn’t do or which products and medicines we could or couldn’t buy.

“That is not to say we didn’t enjoy being clinical directors, but it wasn’t what we wanted to do for the rest of our careers, whereas owning and running our own place was something we both knew would give us that satisfaction long term.

“Here we can do the clinical work exactly the way we feel best and in a way that we feel is sustainable; that works for us, works for our team and for our clients and patients, too.”

Rapid expansion

And the practice Laurie and Kyle built in a high-end business park on the outskirts of the small Suffolk port town certainly seems to be working out for all stakeholders. After taking an initial 1,250sq ft unit that opened in April 2022, demand was so great the practice was extended into an adjacent unit just six months after opening. This extension saw the addition of two extra consult rooms, the installation of a 32-slice GE Revolution ACT scanner and doubled the size of the reception space.

And with such incessant demand – the practice continues to register up to 100 new clients per month – a third extension, which tripled the size of the original footprint, was opened last month. This delivered another two consult rooms, more kennelling and an extremely well-equipped surgical theatre adjacent to a large prep area.

One thing that really stands out is that, despite such rapid growth, it seems every step has been well-planned, with a high level of fit maintained throughout the building.

Equipment levels are also extremely impressive and, with Kyle soon to complete his cardiology certificate and Laurie part way through a small animal surgery PGCert, the practice is focused on being able to deliver a high standard of veterinary medicine for all clients.

Kyle added: “This area has a demographic of slightly older clients who are relatively affluent, whose pets are part of the family and, more likely than not, insured. That means they are more likely to make those investments in their pet’s health that allows us to deliver clinically in a way  all our clinicians aspire, too.

“We already have a certificate holder – three when Laurie and I pass ours – and we can work to that high level as and when required, and we also take a lot of referrals. And that is where the CT scanner came in. We have a huge population of spaniels and Labradors here, mostly working dogs; they get a lot of elbow dysplasia and medial coronoid disease is rife, and x-ray is not very accurate in those cases.

“And people like that we can work cases up to that level and not refer, which gives them that continuity of care they value so much.

“Having a good level of equipment is also what our clinicians want as it means they can do a lot more in house and provide the very best treatment and get those really good outcomes. It does help the business, but it also helps the staff satisfaction immensely and makes our jobs more enjoyable as well.”

High standards

And the investments in equipment and fit out – which include Casco kennelling throughout for both dogs and cats – have not just been limited to the clinical areas– the client-facing spaces also have a very high-end feel.

The reception space is warm and inviting, featuring natural wood finishes and shadow gap timber cladding behind – and on – the reception desk itself. Dark sage green walls complement the tan leather chairs, while the wooden dado rail creates a seamless flow throughout each area.

Useful practice information and owner tips are displayed on the large television in the waiting area, while the warm welcome is completed by practice manager Mark Etheridge’s affable Border collie Harry, who is a regular fixture behind the reception desk.

It all serves to create a relaxed environment that clearly suits the clients, but also their pets. “We wanted the front of house to look like a spa or a boutique shop, not to look like a vet practice.

“We have used very warm lighting and picked colours carefully and we even use cleaners that aren’t very abrasive and have a nice, soft smell to them.

“This all suits the animals too who seem to be extra relaxed coming here, which has led to an interesting thing with our anaesthetic protocols.

“When we started, we were using quite a standard dose premedication for anaesthetics, but we found all our dogs were getting too sleepy on it and, after checking all our doses in our medicines and finding everything was normal, our hypothesis was that they must just be really relaxed, so, we reduced all our anaesthetic doses down, and we still use that protocol.”

Leveraged tech

The practice used the Teleos PMS, which has been linked to a host of processes in the practice; including the Vetstoria online booking system and IDEXX lab machines. All card machines are integrated too, while the practice is using VetCheck, an AI-leveraged, cloud-based hospitalisation and consent form company that also feeds directly into Teleos.

These systems also ensue that clients are kept informed and are not left with any nasty billing surprises following their pet’s treatment.

Laurie said: “Accurate estimates are super-important here, and I think that’s a very valid thing that the CMA flagged up with its investigation.

“We’ve tried very hard to give accurate estimates and we email all our consent forms with the estimates on them to the client the day before. VetCheck does all that automatically, so clients get the digital consent form the day before, with an accurate estimate, procedure details – everything basically.”

The future

So confident are Kyle and Laurie that their model for small animal veterinary care works, they opened a second practice last September, The Hadleigh Vets, through which – and others like it – the pair hope to be able to offer other vets the chance at independent ownership.

The Hadleigh Vets has been set up as a completely separate business entity to allow the incumbent vets to buy into the practice, as Laurie explained.

“Buying into existing practices is, for most people, prohibitively expensive. When I do advice calls with vets wanting to set up their own practice, the most common reasons they haven’t done it already are they don’t have the capital, and they don’t know how to set up a practice, but we have designed an opportunity where both of these can be provided.

“Our aim is to give vets back the opportunity to actually be practice owners by providing funding, day-to-day expertise and mentoring, and carbon-copy of a practice model which we know to be successful. We know that if a practice prioritises good clinical work and cares deeply for its staff and clients, then the finances look after themselves. We kit these practices out fully from day one (CT scanner, high grade ultrasound, laparoscopy) so they can perform at the highest level immediately.

“We know this model works and we want to grow it by allowing vets to buy in and become vet owners; that is a very powerful thing and ultimately is what the veterinary sector needs.”