The amount you pay your software provider is only part of what the system may actually be costing your practice. The price on your billing statement is easy to see and budget for. But some of the biggest costs associated with your clinic’s PIMS can be much harder to quantify. Older, server-based practice management systems can create expenses that show up in hours lost to downtime, hardware and IT maintenance, disconnected workflows, missed charges, after-hours documentation, difficulty integrating with new tools, and more. Let’s explore a few of these areas: What Does an Hour of Downtime Really Cost? Consider what happens when your server goes down. Your team may temporarily lose access to schedules, patient records, treatment sheets, and checkout. The financial impact goes beyond the cost of repairing the server. Calculate the cost of an outage for your practice: Take your average revenue per hour open and multiply it by the number of hours a significant outage could take you offline. The resulting number is the baseline amount one outage could cost your practice. Then think beyond that initial calculation: What happens to appointments that need to be rescheduled? What about checkouts completed from memory or charges that get lost in the scramble? Looking at downtime this way can give you a more complete picture of what your current technology could cost you beyond the number on your software bill. Look for the Work Your Software Creates Not every hidden cost comes with a bill attached. When your PIMS doesn’t connect with the other technology your team uses, people have to fill the gaps. Lab results may need to be printed and scanned. Information may need to be entered more than once. Controlled-substance logs may require manual reconciliation. Each additional step takes time and creates another opportunity for information or revenue to slip through the cracks. Missed charges are one particularly important example. In fact, AAHA research found that 17% of lab tests went unbilled by practices. When capturing a charge depends on someone remembering to add it after a busy appointment, some of the care you've already provided may never make it onto the client invoice. Consider the Cost to Your Team Your team’s time belongs in the equation, too. According to the 2024 State of Veterinary Wellbeing report, veterinarians spend an estimated 30–40% of their working hours on medical record documentation, and after-hours charting and redundant data entry are among the contributors to burnout. Software that adds unnecessary steps, requires extensive training, or makes everyday tasks harder can create costs that extend well beyond technology. When evaluating your current system, consider how much work it asks your team to do simply to keep information moving. How much time is spent on duplicate entry? How often do staff have to work around the software rather than with it? How quickly can a new employee or relief veterinarian become productive? Those are costs, too, even if they never appear as a line item. Digging Deeper into Veterinary Software Costs The right question isn't simply, “What are we paying for our software?” It's also, “What is our software costing us?” Downtime, hardware upgrades, security updates, manual workflows, disconnected systems, training inefficiencies, and growth limitations can all contribute to the true cost of keeping an older system in place. If you’d like to dive deeper into this topic, read The Hidden Costs of Legacy Veterinary Software, a free guide from Instinct that examines seven often overlooked costs and helps you evaluate how your current technology may be affecting your team, operations, and bottom line. Download the free guide to take a closer look at what your veterinary software may really be costing you. To see what a modern, cloud-based PIMS can look like, explore Instinct EMR for Primary Care.
