Veterinary Practice Benchmarking
Benchmarking answers a question owners ask constantly: is this normal? A drug cost of 22 per cent of turnover, a staffing cost of 48 per cent, an average transaction value that has not moved in two years. Without a reference point, none of those figures mean anything.
The value is not in the comparison itself. It is in working out which gaps are worth closing, in what order, and what closing them would be worth.
The Measures We Compare
- Gross margin on medicines and consumables
- Cost of drugs, consumables and food against the income they generate. Buying terms, pricing structure, stock loss and missed charges all show up here.
- Total staffing cost as a share of turnover
- Including locum cover and employer costs. The single most common cause of a practice with good turnover and poor profit.
- Revenue per full-time equivalent veterinary surgeon
- The productivity measure that matters most, and the one that tells you whether a recruitment problem is really a capacity problem.
- Average transaction value and consultation numbers
- Separating a revenue change into price and volume is the first step to knowing what to do about it.
- Pet health plan penetration
- Plan members as a share of the active client base, and what a plan member is worth compared to a non-member.
- EBITDA margin
- Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, adjusted for owner remuneration at a market rate. This is the number a buyer or a bank will look at.
Where the Comparison Data Comes From
Published sector surveys are the main external reference for UK veterinary practice performance, and the SPVS fees and profitability surveys are the most widely used. We work with the published data and we are explicit about its limits: sample sizes vary, definitions differ between practices, and a survey median is not a target.
The stronger comparison is often against your own practice over time, and between your own branches. A site that runs six points of margin below its sibling with the same client demographic is a much sharper signal than any national average.
What You Get at the End
A written review showing where you sit on each measure, which gaps are material, and an estimate of what closing each one would add to profit. The estimate is arithmetic on your own numbers, not a promise.
We then help you sequence the work. Fee structure, stock control, rota shape and plan pricing all take different amounts of effort and pay back over different timescales.
Common Mistakes
- Chasing every gap at once
- A practice that changes pricing, rota, stock process and plan structure in the same quarter cannot tell which change worked. Sequence them.
- Comparing against the wrong peer group
- An equine ambulatory practice and a small animal hospital have completely different cost structures. A benchmark from the wrong group leads to the wrong action.
- Treating the median as the target
- Half of all practices sit below the median by definition. The question is what good looks like for a practice with your client base, not where the middle is.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do you need from us to run a benchmarking review?
How long does it take?
Will you tell us to put our prices up?
Do you compare us against other practices you act for?
We benchmarked two years ago and nothing changed. Why would this be different?
Can you benchmark a practice that has just been acquired?
Request a Practice Performance Review
Send us two years of accounts and a handful of practice management system reports. We will show you where your practice sits and what the gaps are worth.