Customer Highlight: Tier 1 Veterinary Medical Center

At Tier 1 Veterinary Medical Center, an emergency hospital with general practice and specialty services in Palmer, AK, health certificates were handled the old-fashioned way: paper intake forms, handwriting that had to be deciphered at the front desk, and appointments that started 15 or 20 minutes behind schedule because of paperwork delays. Jeannie D. Young, LVT, Practice Manager at Tier 1, turned to GlobalVetLink's intake form and health certificate tools to modernize a process that had been "on the back burner" for too long.

The Challenge: Slow Check-Ins and Costly Mistakes

Before adopting GlobalVetLink, Tier 1's front desk staff had two options for handling health certificate paperwork: ask clients to arrive early, or intake everything on the spot when they walked through the door. Either way, it ate into the appointment.

"It would take fifteen to twenty minutes before they could get into their actual appointment, which kind of delayed everything," Jeannie said.

Handwritten forms carried their own risk. Staff had to interpret each client's handwriting on intake forms, which increases possible errors, and a signed certificate might go out incorrectly. 

The Solution: A Digital Intake Process with Built-In Safeguards

With GlobalVetLink, Tier 1 sends clients the intake link as soon as they register or call in for a health certificate, letting them complete it before ever setting foot in the clinic. If a client hasn't submitted the form within 24 hours of their appointment, a reminder is sent to submit the information. Sending the intake form is simple: for returning clients, the team pulls up their existing record; for new clients, they add a new contact, then send the form.

• Intake Form: Handles the headache of front-end information collection, reducing in-office time that used to delay appointments.

• Built-In Error Checks: Won't let a certificate move forward until every step is complete and correct, catching mistakes a paper form never would.

That safeguard caught a real error before it left the building. A doctor was working on a certificate and couldn't figure out why the platform wouldn’t let them sign it — until Jeannie noticed the listed state of origin wasn't the clinic's state.

"If that were a paper form, we would have just signed it and sent it out," Jeannie said. "The built-in checks save us time and headaches."

The Results: Fewer Errors, Happier Staff, No Client Complaints

• Reduced Errors: Built-in validation catches mistakes before submission, virtually eliminating the handwriting-related errors and rejected certificates that came with paper forms.

• Time Savings: Clients complete intake before arriving, removing the fifteen-to-twenty-minute delay that used to push back appointments.

• Happier Staff: With fewer certificates sent back for correction, CSRs and doctors spend less time redoing paperwork and more time on patient care.

• Client Trust: Clients describe the process as streamlined, and the clinic hasn't received a single complaint since making the switch.

For Jeannie, the biggest win isn't just speed — it's accuracy. "I will say the biggest benefit, though, is fewer errors," she said. "It's that nice double check saying, nope, you can't proceed because you haven't done all the steps yet."

Her advice for any clinic still on the fence: "Start using it because your team will be much happier. They don't get those, 'hey, this is sent back because you made a mistake’ calls. That's amazing for them and the clinic."