Fenton Vets

About Fenton Vets

Providing high quality veterinary care in Pembrokeshire since 1950, Fenton Vets is now one of the largest veterinary practices in Wales. The practice provides dedicated veterinary services for both farm animals and domestic pets, with an out of hours facility and continued investment in expertise and equipment to ensure the very best treatment options for every patient. With a base in Haverfordwest, Fenton Vets also operates a small animal vet department in Pembroke Dock and is part of the XL Vets Group, consisting of independently owned and progressive vet practices around the country.

Optimising efficiency and professionalism

Prior to installing the RemoteM fully automated fridge monitoring and alerting system, Fenton Vets used a combination of dataloggers and manual recording procedures for the fridges and freezers in the practice buildings as well as the chilled facilities in vets’ vans visiting farms around Pembrokeshire.

This presented a number of issues. “The processes were time consuming and only provided information after the fact,” stated Stock Control Manager Becky Byrant. “With no alerting facility, we only found out about incidents like out of hours power or appliance failures after the event. As a practice, we are committed to continuous development and improvement, so I began researching systems capable of monitoring and alerting 24/7 to ensure we could protect our valuable stock and be confident we were administering medicines and vaccines in optimum condition at all times.”

Assessing with a free trial

Becky made the decision to use RemoteM’s free trial option, and was able to experience the potential of the system in action before making the decision to install in the Haverfordwest branch. RemoteM is now monitoring stock for Fenton Vets not just in fridges and freezers but also everywhere drugs and vaccines are stored, including ambient areas and eight mobile vet vans serving the large animal side of the practice.

Becky says the RemoteM system was simplicity itself to install and operate:

Identified benefits

Alongside saving the team at Fenton Vets a significant amount of time by replacing dataloggers which required collecting and downloading, for Becky one of the most important issues is also the reassurance that stock is kept within defined parameters in order to provide the best possible service to customers and their animals.

Key for Fenton Vets is the automated text and email alerting facility which indicates immediately 24/7 if any monitored area goes out of range. “We have live data, all in one place, accessible from anywhere, including reports at our fingertips,” said Becky. 

RemoteM in action

Becky has also had the opportunity to experience how valuable RemoteM system can be in terms of stock preservation. One Sunday evening, she received an alert of an out of temperature event on the large animal fridge, which holds a significant amount of valuable stock.

“I was able to contact one of the vets on call, who dropped by the surgery to check. Quite literally, a box had prevented the fridge door closing again securely after some stock had been removed,” explained Becky. “The vet was able to shut the door and I could verify the fridge returning immediately to temperature. We had clear and accurate evidence of the duration of the event, and were able to verify that this would not impact on the efficacy of the fridge contents.” 

Into the future

Becky also added that Fenton Vets are currently also reviewing the fridge element of their insurance, and have found it useful to be able to demonstrate how the chilled storage has performed over the year and to show how text and email alerts prove so valuable in the event of any outages.

“At Fenton Vets, we have two branches; RemoteM is installed in our larger Haverfordwest site and I am now organising installation for our second site. I would not hesitate to recommend the system and the service from RemoteM.”