The best way for a veterinary group to stop relying on a relief agency is to build its own private relief network: a pool of vetted relief vets who book with you directly, managed on one platform. In the worked example below, a 5-location group cuts its annual relief spend by about 16% in year one, before counting any placement fees, and gets steadier coverage from vets who already know its teams.
Here's what the numbers actually look like, and how groups are making the transition.
What "In-House Relief Staffing" Actually Means
Moving relief in-house doesn't mean hiring all your relief vets as employees. It means taking ownership of your relief program rather than outsourcing it to a third-party agency.
In practice, that looks like:
- Maintaining a pool of vetted relief vets and techs who work directly with your practice
- Managing scheduling, payments, and communications through your own systems rather than an agency's
- Building direct, ongoing relationships with relief professionals rather than treating each shift as a one-off transaction
- Using a dedicated platform to handle the administrative complexity at scale
The agency still handled the relationship and the logistics, charging you significantly for it. In-house means you own the relationship and use purpose-built software to manage the rest.
How Agency and In-House Costs Actually Compare
To understand the ROI, you need to compare the total cost of each model:
Agency model costs:
- Agency markup on top of the relief vet's day rate (the example below assumes 37.5%)
- Placement fees if you convert a relief vet to full-time, usually charged as a percentage of first-year salary
- Agency administrative fees or subscription costs
- Time spent coordinating with the agency (calls, emails, approvals)
In-house model costs:
- Platform cost (for a purpose-built relief management tool like Groove: $99 to $249/month per practice, or custom pricing for enterprise)
- Internal time to manage the network (typically lower than agency coordination once the system is established)
- Onboarding cost when adding new relief vets to your network
A concrete example:
A 5-location veterinary group runs 200 relief shifts per year. The average agency-billed rate is $1,100 per shift (DVM day rate of $800 plus 37.5% agency markup). Total annual agency spend: $220,000.
After moving in-house with direct relief relationships:
- Average direct day rate paid to relief vets: $850 (vets benefit too, since there's no agency taking a cut)
- Annual platform cost: roughly $15,000 for 5 locations
- Total annual in-house cost: $185,000
Net savings: ~$35,000 per year, a 16% reduction, on a conservative model that doesn't account for placement fees or agency subscription costs.
Groups with higher shift volumes, higher agency markups, or multiple DVM-to-hire conversions through agencies see substantially larger savings.
How Much Administrative Time Does In-House Relief Actually Save?
The financial ROI is meaningful, but many practice managers say the operational improvement matters just as much.
Managing relief through agencies means a lot of back-and-forth: calls to confirm availability, emails to verify credentials, invoices that don't match what was agreed, and coordination delays that leave gaps open longer than they should be.
Managing relief through a dedicated platform like Groove consolidates all of that into one system: shift scheduling, availability announcements, timesheets, invoicing, and messaging live in one place. Relief vets can see open shifts and confirm directly. Practice managers get a real-time view of upcoming coverage without making calls.
Every shift that books directly removes a round of calls, emails and invoice checks. Across several locations, that time adds up on top of the direct savings from cutting out agency markup.
Does In-House Relief Actually Improve Coverage Reliability?
One of the underrated benefits of in-house relief programs is coverage consistency.
When you work directly with the same relief vets repeatedly, they know your practice: your EMR, your protocols, your team, your clients. That familiarity makes them faster, more effective, and easier to integrate into the day. Client-facing continuity improves. Error rates from unfamiliar workflows decrease.
Agency-managed relief is inherently transactional. The agency fills the slot; there's no systematic incentive to send the same vet twice. Direct relationships compound over time.
Groups that have built strong direct relief networks also report better coverage rates during high-demand periods (summer, holidays) because their relief vets prioritize practices they have real relationships with. When you're competing with agencies and other practices for coverage during a busy holiday weekend, the practices with established direct relationships win.
What Groups Actually See After the Transition
The patterns that emerge from groups that have made this move:
Year 1: The transition requires some upfront investment in relationship-building and platform setup. Cost savings are real but may be partially offset by time spent building the network. Coverage is more reliable, but the network may still have gaps that agencies fill.
Year 2+: The network matures, agency reliance drops significantly, and the cost savings accumulate. Administrative overhead is low because the systems are established. The relief vets in the network have developed real loyalty to the practices they work with.
The inflection point comes when the practice has enough direct relationships that agency calls drop from routine to exceptional.
How to Calculate Your Own ROI
A simple framework:
Step 1: Measure current agency spend. Total your agency invoices for the last 12 months. Separate the markup from the base day rate if your agency provides that breakdown.
Step 2: Estimate direct relationship cost. Multiply the day rate you'd pay relief vets directly by your expected shift volume. In the example above, that's $850 per shift against an agency-billed $1,100.
Step 3: Add platform cost. For Groove, that's $99/month for 1-2 relief relationships, $249/month for 3-5, or custom pricing for larger networks. For a 3-location group using 5 relief vets, budget roughly $9,000/year.
Step 4: Account for transition costs. Add an estimate of internal time spent building the network and getting the platform set up, and track the manager hours it actually takes in the first 90 days.
Step 5: Calculate your break-even. Divide your transition costs by your expected monthly savings to see how many months it takes to come out ahead.
How to Build a Private Relief Network Instead of Relying on an Agency
A private relief network is a short list of relief vets and techs who book shifts with your practice directly. Most groups can start one with people they already know.
- Start with the relief vets you already trust. List everyone who covered a shift in the last year, through an agency or not, and ask the ones your team liked whether they would book with you directly.
- Ask your own team for referrals. Associates and techs often know relief vets from school, past jobs or local meetups, and a referral comes with a built-in reference.
- Post open shifts with the details relief vets care about. The date, the day rate and the expected caseload get better responses than a vague request, and this guide to writing a post that attracts relief professionals covers what else to include.
- Verify every license before the first shift. Veterinarians need a license in each state where they practice, and the American Association of Veterinary State Boards (AAVSB) license look-up points you to the right state board to check.
- Set clear rates and pay on time. Publish one day rate per shift type and pay within the window you promise, since reliable payment is what turns a one-time relief vet into a regular.
- Keep the network warm between shifts. Share upcoming needs early, include relief vets in the occasional team lunch, and ask what would bring them back.
What Makes the Transition Work
Groups that succeed with in-house relief programs have a few things in common:
They use a platform from day one. Trying to manage a growing relief network with spreadsheets leads to the same administrative chaos that made agencies feel necessary, a pattern covered in more detail in How to Manage Veterinary Relief Shifts Without Losing Your Mind. Purpose-built tools are what make direct relationship management practical at scale.
They proactively maintain relationships. The network doesn't sustain itself. The best practices check in with their relief vets between engagements, give advance notice on upcoming needs, and pay reliably and on time. These behaviors make practices preferred destinations for relief work.
They don't go cold turkey on agencies. A phased approach works better than a hard cutover. Start by managing your existing direct relief relationships through a platform. Add new direct relationships over time. Let agency dependence decrease naturally as the network grows.
They track the numbers. Groups that monitor their per-shift cost, their agency-versus-direct split, and their coverage fill rate have better visibility into whether the program is working, and can make adjustments before problems compound.
Is In-House Right for Every Group?
In-house relief management makes the most sense for groups that:
- Run more than 50 relief shifts per year
- Have existing relationships with at least a few relief vets
- Have enough management capacity to own the program (or a platform that reduces that burden)
- Are experiencing meaningful pain from agency costs, coverage gaps, or lack of consistency
Single-location practices with low relief volume may find that the overhead of running a full in-house program isn't worth it at their scale. But even at smaller scale, having 2 to 3 direct relief relationships managed through a simple platform typically beats the alternative.
For multi-location groups, the ROI case is nearly always compelling.
The math above is a starting point, not a guarantee. Every group's actual savings will depend on its agency markup, shift volume, and how quickly it builds direct relationships with relief vets. But the pattern holds across the groups making this move: the in-house model tends to pay for itself faster than leadership expects, and the operational clarity that comes with owning the program directly often ends up mattering as much as the dollars saved.