Competence through cooperation

In addition to analysis as a classic laboratory service, the fields of consultation, service and communication play an important role in LABOKLIN’s overall concept. Well-known and popular in veterinary practices are the information leaflets of the Rat & Tat series, which have been informing pet owners about the most important diseases of their pets since 1996 and thus help the veterinarian to retain his clients. In addition, of course, they also benefit the patients themselves, because the patient-owner should also think along, recognise signs of diseases and go to the vet in time. The series is constantly being expanded and continued, and not only that: it has also inspired many other laboratories to do something similar… Of course, LABOKLIN also communicates directly with vets. The counterpart to Rat & Tat is the doctors’ service LABOKLIN aktuell.

In addition, LABOKLIN staff are regularly present at training events for veterinarians and veterinary assistants. As a representative of a large laboratory, which after all makes its living from examinations for veterinarians, why do you train your customers? Elisabeth Müller is not afraid that this will make her less busy: “On the contrary – the appetite comes with eating. If you don’t know the possibilities of a modern laboratory, you won’t send anything away for examination. And only the veterinarian who is informed about laboratory medicine recognises the point where it makes more sense for cost or material reasons to use a specialised laboratory instead of examining in the practice. But there are definitely parameters that are designed as in-house tests and can be determined in the practice on site with excellent quality.”

However, the managing director also sees that many veterinary practices put themselves under pressure when they offer to do a laboratory test within minutes and to inform the client of the result immediately: “The veterinarian often lets himself be forced to have his diagnosis ready within minutes. In many cases, there is nothing to be said against sending the sample away and informing the client of the result two days later. This has the advantage for the veterinarian that he gains time to reconsider the diagnosis, perhaps to read up on something or to discuss it with a colleague if all the findings don’t fit together so well.” The LABOKLIN people are of the opinion that a healthy mix of their own and the external large laboratory best conveys the veterinarian’s competence to the clients. The veterinarian can demonstrate that he or she can do a certain number of tests well in the office, but that he or she has the more advanced capabilities of the large laboratory behind him or her just as well in other cases. Every patient owner understands this much better than if someone wants to be able to do everything on his own.