PIMS (practice-management system)

A PIMS, or practice information management system, is the software a veterinary clinic uses to run its appointment book, patient and client records, reminders and invoicing.

If you work at a front desk, the PIMS is the screen you live in. It holds the appointment calendar for each vet and room, the client's contact details, each pet's history, the reminders due, the estimates and the invoices. When someone says "check the system," this is the system they mean.

Cloud and on-premise

Some PIMS run in the cloud and are used in a web browser, so the team can open them from any computer with a login. Others are installed on a server inside the clinic. The difference matters for the front desk mostly in how easy it is to reach the schedule away from the main computer, and for other tools in how they can connect to it.

What the front desk does in it

A large share of front-desk work is reading from and writing to the PIMS: finding the right client when the phone rings, checking which slots are free for the right appointment type, booking and moving visits, adding notes for the vet, and sending or checking reminders. A tidy PIMS, with current phone numbers and clear appointment types, makes every one of those tasks faster.

Why it matters beyond the desk

Because the PIMS is the clinic's single record of the schedule, any tool that books appointments needs to write into it rather than keep a separate calendar. Two calendars drift apart, and drift leads to clashes and lost bookings.

An example

At a two-vet clinic, a receptionist answers a call from a client wanting a nail trim. She searches the client by phone number in the PIMS, sees the dog's last visit, finds a short slot with the nurse on Thursday, books it and adds a note. The client gets the reminder the PIMS sends two days later.

How Tilly handles it

Tilly books, moves and cancels appointments directly in Shepherd, ezyVet, IDEXX Neo, Covetrus Pulse, IDEXX Cornerstone and Covetrus AVImark. If your clinic uses another PIMS, Tilly takes booking requests as tasks for your team to enter.

For how the schedule ties to revenue, read the phone revenue guide. Related: PIMS integration and double booking.