The CMA published its Final Report on veterinary services for household pets on 24 March 2026, confirming 14 legally binding remedies covering pricing transparency, itemised billing, ownership disclosure, and prescription fee caps. Independent practices have until March 2027 to comply. No practice management system (PIMS) handles all the requirements out of the box. This guide breaks down what the CMA expects, how the main PIMS platforms handle each obligation, what dedicated compliance tools exist, and where bespoke software fills the gaps.
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The CMA's investigation ran from September 2023 to March 2026. Its core finding was straightforward: a lack of consumer-facing information produces weak competition and high prices across the veterinary sector. The Final Report confirmed 14 legally binding remedies designed to address this. Some sources (including certain vendor marketing pages) still reference "21 remedies" from the October 2025 Provisional Decision. The correct figure is 14 final remedies.
For independent practices, the good news is that the CMA's own data shows independents are cheaper on average than large veterinary groups (LVGs). Compliance is largely about documenting and publishing what you already do. The challenge is operational: your software needs to support new billing formats, new website content, new disclosure requirements, and new data submissions to the RCVS.
Not all 14 remedies require software changes. The remedies that directly affect your technology stack fall into five categories: standardised price lists, itemised billing, written estimates, prescription fee compliance, and ownership transparency. The remaining remedies cover complaints procedures, clinical independence policies, pet care plan transparency, and the RCVS "Find a Vet" comparison service. Each of these has a documentation or data submission component that your systems need to support.
The CMA Order has not yet been published at the time of writing. It is expected on 23 September 2026, at which point the remedies become legally binding. Some details may change during the Order drafting process. This article will be updated once the Order lands.
The CMA defines a Large Veterinary Group (LVG) as a business operating 15 or more first opinion practices. Six LVGs are named in the report: CVS, IVC, Linnaeus, Medivet, Pets at Home, and VetPartners. These groups have a shorter compliance deadline of three months from the Order (December 2026). If your practice is independent or part of a smaller group, you have an additional three months, with a deadline of March 2027.
The RCVS will levy a setup fee of GBP 150-250 per practice and an ongoing annual fee of GBP 450-550 per practice. These costs cover RCVS monitoring, the comparison service, and enforcement support. The CMA (not the RCVS) retains direct enforcement powers for Order breaches, including binding directions and financial penalties.
Itemised billing is not new. Most PIMS can generate invoices with line items. The CMA requirement raises the bar: every treatment and service must be itemised, including fees for outside services (referrals, external lab work) and any administrative or other charges. If your current invoices group items under a single "treatment" line or bury dispensing fees inside a consultation charge, your PIMS configuration needs work. For a deeper look at how billing works across the main platforms, see our guide to veterinary billing and insurance software.
The practical steps depend on your PIMS, but the general approach is the same across platforms. Review your product and service codes. Break bundled items into separate line items. Ensure that consultation fees, procedure fees, medication costs, and administrative charges each appear as distinct invoice lines. Test the output against the CMA's itemisation standard before the deadline.
Any treatment expected to cost GBP 500 or more (including aftercare costs) requires a mandatory written estimate before treatment begins. Emergencies are exempt. Your PIMS or a supplementary tool needs to flag when a treatment plan crosses this threshold and generate a written estimate that you can present to the client. Some practices already do this informally. The CMA is making it a legal obligation with documentation requirements.
This is the remedy most likely to require new software or a new workflow. No major PIMS currently exports a CMA-compliant price list to your website automatically. You will need either a manual process (exporting prices from your PIMS and formatting them for your website) or a dedicated tool that automates the publishing step.
The CMA defines a specific list of common services that must be priced on your website. These include consultations, out-of-hours consultations, vaccinations (primary courses, boosters, kennel cough), written prescription fees, administrative fees, neutering (castration, laparoscopic spay, open spay), microchipping, routine dental assessment, scale and polish, X-rays (three images plus sedation), abdominal ultrasound (per organ), echocardiogram, cytology (ears, fine-needle aspirations), urine screen, pre-operative bloods, CT and MRI (per body part with interpretation), and euthanasia and cremation.
Routine surgeries must include tick-box disclosure of what is and is not included in the quoted fee. This means your price list is not just a flat table of numbers. It is a structured document with conditional inclusions.
Parasiticide products (flea, tick, worming) must be listed for products selling over 100 units per year, or the top 10 products, subdivided by size, dosage, and formulation (spot-on, tablet, collar). If your practice offers a pet care plan, you must show comparison costs for services with and without the plan, and list the specific parasiticides included. Discretionary discounts are excluded from the comparison calculation. For practices with dispensing workflows that need tightening, our veterinary dispensing compliance guide covers the VMD and RCVS requirements in detail.
All practices, online pharmacies, referral centres, out-of-hours providers, diagnostic labs, and pet crematoria must disclose whether they are part of a large veterinary group and identify who controls them. For independent practices, this is straightforward: state that you are independently owned and identify the practice owner or directors. The disclosure must appear on your website, online profiles, premises signage, external signage, and client communications.
The prescription fee cap is set at GBP 21 for the first medicine (including VAT) and GBP 12.50 per additional medicine prescribed during the same consultation. Your billing system must enforce these caps. You must also publicise clients' ability to request written prescriptions on your website and in communications, and include a statement that "substantial savings are often available from online pharmacies." Some industry bodies, notably the FIVP, have objected to this requirement on the grounds that it advantages corporate groups that own online pharmacies. Regardless of the debate, the requirement is legally binding once the Order is published.
The short answer is that no PIMS currently handles the full scope of CMA requirements out of the box. Each platform covers some elements, primarily around invoicing, but none automates price list publishing, ownership disclosure, or RCVS data submission. For a full comparison of PIMS features and pricing, see our veterinary software UK comparison guide.
| CMA Requirement | ezyVet | Animana (IDEXX) | Provet Cloud | RxWorks / Ascend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Itemised billing | Yes (needs config) | Yes (needs config) | Yes (needs config) | Yes (needs config) |
| Written estimates (GBP 500+) | Manual | Manual | Manual | Manual |
| Published price lists | No | No | No | No |
| Prescription fee cap enforcement | No | No | No | No |
| Ownership disclosure | No | No | No | No |
| Pet care plan comparison | No | No | No | No |
| RCVS data submission | No | No | No | No |
Cloud-based, used across primary care, emergency, and specialty. ezyVet can generate invoices with line items, but does not auto-format to CMA itemisation standards. Price list publishing to the practice website is not a native feature. Pricing starts from approximately USD 245 per month. Strong for high-volume billing but will require configuration work and a supplementary tool for price list compliance.
Cloud-based and widely used in UK independent and multi-site practices. Animana handles invoicing with email delivery and insurance claim creation, but no CMA-specific compliance features are documented. There is no automated price list export. Protocol-based workflows may help standardise billing templates, but the practice will need to configure these manually to meet CMA standards.
Cloud-based with strong business intelligence reporting. VetComply has confirmed that Provet Cloud does not cover CMA pricing transparency or RCVS PSS obligations. Invoicing exists and charge capture can be automated, but CMA-compliant itemisation requires manual configuration. The platform's AI assistant for SOAP notes may help document clinical independence (a separate CMA remedy), but that is not a billing feature.
RxWorks is an established PIMS focused on inventory management. Covetrus Ascend is a newer workflow-driven cloud platform. Neither has documented CMA compliance features. Both would require manual configuration for itemised billing and a separate solution for price list publishing, prescription fee cap enforcement, and ownership disclosure.
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Three tools have emerged specifically to address CMA compliance gaps that PIMS platforms leave open. Each covers a different part of the problem.
VetComply is built by Crocker Digital Ltd and is a non-clinical compliance platform purpose-built for UK independent veterinary practices. It offers a free CMA compliance self-assessment tool covering all remedies from the March 2026 Final Report. The tool identifies compliance gaps before the September 2026 deadline.
Beyond the CMA, VetComply covers RCVS PSS, health and safety, COSHH, IRR17, VMD, clinical waste, and fire safety on a single dashboard. It generates documentation for RCVS assessments, CMA audits, and health and safety inspections from a single source of truth. Pricing starts from GBP 29 per month per practice (pre-launch pricing), which works out to GBP 348 per year. That is less than the CMA's own estimate of GBP 450-550 per year for compliance costs.
VetComply does not replace your PIMS. It does not generate invoices, process payments, or manage clinical records. What it does is provide checklists, gap analysis, and documentation templates for the non-clinical compliance obligations that PIMS platforms do not cover.
Digital Practice is a veterinary website builder with a CMA Pricing and Compliance plugin currently in closed beta. The plugin automates price list publishing on practice websites with CMA-compliant formatting. For multi-site practices, it offers a central dashboard to manage pricing either centrally or per clinic, handling VAT calculations and updates from a single interface.
The technical challenge Digital Practice is solving is significant: each PIMS codes prices differently, with different API endpoints. Prices may be stored as single fees or as sub-components spread across multiple database tables. Automating the extraction and formatting of this data is not trivial. Practices can join a waiting list at digitalpractice.vet.
CoVet is an AI-powered consultation transcription and veterinary copilot. Its CMA relevance is narrower than VetComply or Digital Practice: it flags when treatment costs cross the GBP 500 threshold (prompting the written estimate requirement) and creates objective records of consultations that evidence clinical independence from commercial pressure.
CoVet does not handle price list publishing, itemised invoicing, or ownership disclosure. It supports the CMA estimate and clinical independence requirements only. It is a useful supplement, not a compliance solution on its own.
Practices must submit key information to the RCVS via a web form: ownership details, services offered, pet types treated, pricing for the defined common services, and pet care plan details. This data will be made available through the RCVS "Find a Vet" service and shared with approved third-party comparison websites.
The RCVS comparison service is scheduled for full operation by September 2027. The intention is to give pet owners a single place to compare pricing and services across practices. For independent practices, this is an opportunity: the CMA's own data shows independents are cheaper on average, and a transparent comparison service should make that visible to consumers. The practical requirement is ensuring your pricing data is accurate, current, and formatted correctly for RCVS submission.
The CMA retains direct enforcement powers for Order breaches. Enforcement actions range from working with a practice to change its processes, to issuing binding directions requiring compliance, to imposing financial penalties. The RCVS monitors compliance and reports to the CMA, but it is the CMA that enforces the Order.
The risk is not theoretical. The CMA invested two and a half years in this investigation and created a bespoke enforcement framework. Practices that ignore the deadlines should expect regulatory attention.
Most independent practices will meet CMA requirements through a combination of PIMS configuration, a dedicated compliance tool like VetComply, and manual website updates. But certain practice types face more complex requirements that packaged tools cannot handle cleanly.
The CMA Order is expected on 23 September 2026. Independent practices then have until March 2027 to comply. Here is what to do now.
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The CMA's 14 legally binding remedies create real software and operational requirements for every UK veterinary practice. Independent practices have until March 2027 to comply. No PIMS handles everything: itemised billing needs configuration, price list publishing needs a new tool or manual process, and ownership disclosure, prescription messaging, and RCVS data submission are entirely outside what PIMS platforms cover today.
VetComply (from GBP 29 per month) provides a compliance dashboard and self-assessment tool. Digital Practice is building an automated price list publishing plugin. CoVet helps with written estimate triggers and clinical independence documentation. For practices with complex billing, multi-site operations, or bespoke care plans, a custom integration layer may be the most reliable path to compliance.
The CMA Order lands in September 2026. Start your assessment now. The practices that treat this as a documentation exercise (rather than a last-minute panic) will spend less, stress less, and be ready when enforcement begins.