Veterinary Urgent-Care Network Architect

The mandate

Pet owners currently enter urgent care through phone, messaging, walk-in clinics and partner hospitals, receiving inconsistent urgency, price and destination guidance. Teletriage can identify concern but does not see real clinic diagnostics, species skills or referral acceptance; clinics hold appointment capacity while emergency cases wait; and follow-up disappears after external transfer. The defined problem is to create one urgent-care operating model that improves navigation while leaving diagnosis and treatment entirely with licensed veterinarians.

The primary deliverable is a Veterinary Urgent-Care Network Architecture covering owner intake, consent, non-diagnostic triage boundaries, clinic capability, capacity visibility, appointment release, arrival, diagnostics, escalation, referral acceptance, transport advice, financial estimate, discharge, external handover and follow-up. It will include clinic archetypes, service-state definitions, professional decision rights, data minimums, partner standards, capacity rules, owner communication, quality evidence and unit economics for four representative journeys.

Four milestones govern five months. By week four, milestone one reconstructs forty urgent journeys across eight clinics and partners. Week nine delivers demand, capability and referral maps with three operating alternatives. Week fifteen concludes controlled simulations for poisoning concern, respiratory distress, exotic species, diagnostics outage, payment uncertainty and unavailable referral beds. At week twenty, the final milestone supplies the accepted architecture, clinic-readiness pack, partner compact, technology requirements, investment case and staged rollout.

Acceptance rests jointly with the chief operating officer and Veterinary Clinical Council, with licensed leaders approving all professional boundaries. Work is accepted only when two regions can route six simulations through named owners without non-clinicians issuing diagnosis; clinics can expose truthful skill and diagnostic capacity; referral receipt and follow-up are evidenced; and owner communications clearly distinguish urgency guidance, estimate and clinical decision. Financial or capacity constraints must be visible, not encoded as lower urgency.

The client provides de-identified journey records, call and scheduling data, clinic capabilities, rosters, incidents, diagnostic availability, referral agreements, owner feedback and approved observation access. Consultants will not assess live animals, diagnose, prescribe, determine urgency, advise transport for actual cases, access unnecessary owner data or certify clinics. Clinical protocols, platform build, partner contracting and live implementation are excluded; veterinary specialists own every medical conclusion.

Why this is external work

Teletriage, clinics and referral hospitals each protect legitimate boundaries but optimise their own queue and customer promise. Prior internal work started from software routing rather than professional and species capability. External service architecture brings neutral journey evidence, cross-network design and scenario testing while the clinical council retains the authority that cannot be standardised or delegated.

What you will own

• Reconstruct forty journeys across intake, guidance, clinic arrival, diagnostics, escalation, referral, discharge and follow-up.
• Segment clinic capability by species, practitioner skill, diagnostics, treatment hours, nursing cover and transfer access.
• Define decision rights among owner support, teletriage, clinic teams, veterinarians, laboratories and referral partners.
• Build capacity rules that expose truthful availability without allowing commercial or queue pressure to alter urgency.
• Test six scenarios for professional boundaries, capability mismatch, owner communication and failed referral closure.
• Specify partner compact, state model, minimum evidence, quality measures, escalation clocks and system requirements.
• Deliver the accepted architecture, clinic-readiness pack, investment case and sequenced two-region rollout.

Candidate qualifications

• Has designed urgent, emergency or referral services across a multi-site veterinary or clinically governed care network.
• Can evidence a navigation model changed because available appointments did not represent safe clinical capability.
• Understands teletriage limits, species and skill variation, diagnostics, referral acceptance, owner consent and follow-up.
• Has built operational decision boundaries that protect licensed judgment from customer, capacity and revenue pressure.
• Can analyse de-identified journeys and clinic capacity without inferring diagnoses or individual treatment choices.
• Has facilitated clinicians, service teams, partners and executives through scenario-based operating-model acceptance.

Non-negotiables

• Can complete eight clinic observations and both controlled network simulations during the five-month engagement.
• Will not diagnose, prescribe, assess live cases or offer owner-specific urgency and transport advice.
• Brings direct clinically governed service architecture; pet-retail or booking-platform experience alone is insufficient.
• Will preserve failed referrals, owner declines and unresolved follow-up in outcome evidence.

1. 49 words maximum. Which clinic-capacity signal proved unsafe as a proxy for true urgent-care capability?
2. 49 words maximum. Describe an operating boundary that prevented a non-clinician from drifting into diagnosis.
3. 49 words maximum. What referral-closure evidence would you require before accepting the network design?