When every patient gets the same high-quality care, everyone wins - pets are healthier, clients are happier, and your team runs more smoothly.
Standards of Care (SOCs) make that consistency possible.
This blog post covers what SOCs are, why they matter, and how you can set them up in ezyVet to improve client compliance, optimize inventory, and save valuable time.
Key takeaways
- SOCs standardize how treatments and vaccinations are managed in your practice.
- SOCs can increase client compliance, streamline stock management, and reduce manual work.
- You can use ezyVet’s SOC system to track a patient’s treatment plan and automatically send reminders to pet owners.
What is a standard of care in ezyVet?
An SOC in ezyVet is a predefined set of treatments or vaccinations that define the recommended care plan for a patient. It provides clear, repeatable processes that make it easier to deliver high-quality patient care while saving time for your team.
ezyVet’s standard-of-care system enables you to build SOCs directly into your daily workflows, giving you an efficient way to track treatments, manage due dates, and automatically remind clients about upcoming care needs. Think of it as a checklist for maintaining a patient’s ongoing health - automatically tracking what’s been completed, what’s due, and what’s coming up next.
The primary way ezyVet displays this information is through the standard-of-care table — a clear, color-coded chart that instantly shows the status of each vaccination or treatment.
- Black: The treatment or vaccination has been fulfilled.
- Orange: The item is due within the next month.
- Red: The item is overdue.
This system gives your team an instant visual overview of a patient’s preventive care status. You can find these SOC tables in the S.O.C. tab of patient records and the S.O.C. tab of clinical records. You can also see a quick visual in the pop-up window that is displayed when you hover over a calendar appointment. Take the interactive tour to learn more about ezyVet's SOC system!
ezyVet can automatically medical service reminders to clients based on SOC data. That means no more manual reminder lists or missed due dates. Clients receive timely notifications about upcoming treatments or vaccinations, helping them stay proactive about their pet’s care - and helping your practice maintain consistent patient outcomes.
The benefits of standards of care
When your team follows a clearly defined framework for vaccinations and treatments, everything from communication to inventory management becomes more efficient.
Here are the key benefits of using SOCs in ezyVet:
1. Improved client compliance
One of the biggest challenges for any veterinary practice is ensuring clients keep up with their pets’ care schedules. SOCs take that burden off the client by automatically tracking due dates and sending reminders to pet owners.
Because the system handles this automatically, clients don’t have to remember when their pet’s next vaccination or treatment is due - they’ll receive reminders before anything is overdue. And, whereas most practice management solutions only trigger reminders based on invoices or appointments, ezyVet can generate reminders based on important clinical data such as a patient’s species, age, sex, life stage, or presenting problem.
This visibility helps clients stay engaged with their pet’s care, increases appointment bookings, and supports better health outcomes.
2. Reduced manual work
Without SOCs, staff often spend valuable time creating reminder lists, checking due dates, or manually updating patient records. ezyVet automates much of that process. Once your SOCs are configured, the system tracks due dates, updates records when treatments are invoiced, and triggers reminders automatically.
This not only saves time but also minimizes the risk of errors or missed follow-ups, allowing your team to focus more on patient care rather than administrative tasks.
3. Better inventory management
SOCs can also help your team plan ahead. For example, if you know a large number of patients are due for a particular vaccination next month, you can adjust your stock levels accordingly.
By forecasting upcoming treatments through SOC data, you can avoid both overstocking and running short on key items. It’s a simple yet powerful way to stay proactive with your inventory, ensuring your clinic is always prepared for what’s ahead.
4. Increased revenue opportunities
SOCs support stronger compliance, which naturally translates into more completed appointments, better utilization of services, and higher revenue. When reminders go out automatically, clients are more likely to return for follow-up treatments and wellness visits — creating a reliable source of recurring income.
5. Training and onboarding
SOCs make it easier for new staff to get up to speed. With clearly defined care protocols built into ezyVet, new team members can quickly understand how your practice delivers treatments, schedules vaccinations, and communicates due dates. This helps maintain consistent standards across the entire team — even as new veterinarians or nurses join the practice.
How to set up an SOC in ezyVet
Setting up an SOC in ezyVet is straightforward, and once configured, it runs largely on autopilot. Let’s look at how we’d go about setting up an SOC for a rabies vaccine:
Step 1: Create your event group
Start in your Admin tab, navigate to Event Groups, and select Vaccine Groups (Note: To configure a treatment, select Treatment Groups). From here, you can enter a name for the vaccine service (“Rabies”) and set its Importance (Core, Non-core, or Required). Set Type to Vaccine and hit Save.
Step 2: Define who the SOC applies to
After completing Step 1, you’ll see condition settings for the new care service you just created.
In the Vaccine For section, specify which patients should receive this SOC. You can customize this based on animal, species, tag, presenting problem, sex, and other variables. We want our rabies vaccination to only apply to canines, so let’s set the criteria to Species and type Canine (Dog) into the top search field.
You can also define the First Due at Age field. If no first due date is set, the SOC remains inactive (black) until it’s triggered by a related product being invoiced.
In the Exclude For section, you can omit certain animals that shouldn’t receive the SOC. This is particularly useful for exemptions due to age, health condition, or species-specific considerations.
Step 3: Link the SOC to products
The Event Group Association section is where everything ties together. Here, link the products that fulfill the SOC - for example, all rabies vaccine products available in your system. You can also define the Next Due In interval, such as one year for an annual rabies vaccine or two years for a biennial one.
Once a linked product is invoiced, ezyVet automatically updates the patient’s SOC due date. That means your records, reminders, and reports stay synchronized without extra manual input.
See the official documentation for more information on setting up a vaccination SOC in ezyVet.
Treatment SOCs
Setting up a treatment SOC is the same as configuring a vaccination SOC. The setup logic is the same - you define eligibility criteria, exclusions, and linked products. For example, you could have an annual health check SOC that applies to all felines and canines aged one year and older. You could exclude patients with specific tags (like “long-term medication”) and link the annual health check product, ensuring the due date updates one year after invoicing.
Sometimes, you might want an SOC for treatments that only happen once, like microchipping. In this case, you can still set up a treatment SOC but leave the due date blank. That way, when the microchip product is invoiced, it remains fulfilled indefinitely. It’s a great way to keep permanent treatments visible in your standard of care table.
See the official documentation for more information on setting up a treatment SOC in ezyVet.
Conclusion
Standards of care are key to building consistency, confidence, and efficiency into your daily operations. With ezyVet’s SOC system, you can take the guesswork out of preventive care, improve compliance, and give every patient the same high-quality experience.
Ready to bring greater consistency and confidence to your practice? Learn how ezyVet can help you set up and manage your Standards of Care.