Don’t Risk Losing Your Pharmacy IncomeSeptember 30, 2013 When faxing prescription authorization requests to veterinarians, 1-800-PetMeds now asks you to provide the next exam due date. Be cautious; this may be a marketing strategy to get your clients to refill prescriptions before their preventive care exams. If clients already have preventives and other medications, they won’t need to buy drugs from your hospital. Veterinarians own majority market share of the $4 billion pet medication market.1 But Internet and retail pharmacies have tasted success with flea/tick sales, and now they’re hungry for pet prescriptions, which are projected to grow to $9.3 billion in 2015.2 The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) reports that pharmacy, food and over-the-counter product income makes up 26 percent of gross income in small animal practices.3 If pharmacy income shifts to retail and Internet pharmacies, most hospitals couldn’t raise professional fees enough to counter the income decline. Follow these proactive strategies to protect your in-clinic pharmacy. Refill medications during exams. Your technician would say, "For your preventive care visit, we will do a nose-to-tail exam, vaccines, intestinal parasite screen, heartworm/tick screen, and refill 12 months of parasite preventives. …
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Endoscopy Primer: What To Ask Before BuyingSeptember 30, 2013 If you’re a clinic owner and a technophile, you probably have all the latest and the greatest equipment available. But when it comes to endoscopy, the first thing you need to know is that you will use it, said Eric Lindquist, DrMedVet. Lindquist, a highly experienced endoscopy practitioner and incoming president of the International Veterinary Ultrasound Society for 2013/2014, advises veterinarians that before laying out the cash for endoscopy equipment, the first part of your plan should be to make sure it’s going to be economically viable for your clinic. "The main thing is to make sure they are actually going to use it and work it into their workflow in a useful and economically viable manner that merits the purchase and the training and the time involved to become proficient at endoscopy,” Lindquist said. "I have known people who could be in and out of the gastrointestinal tract in 15 minutes with optimal samples with endoscopy, and others that take an hour-and-a-half with inadequate samples. "It depends on the person and the ability to become efficient at this instrumentation.” Unlike ultrasound, which can be applied to just about any internal medicine case, endoscopy …
Advising Our Kids Against A Career In Veterinary MedicineSeptember 30, 2013 My son is a 15-year-old high schooler who excels in the sciences and adores his animals. With those vital qualifications and a veterinarian for a mom, it makes sense to me that he might see veterinary stars in his future. But now that he’s finally admitted he doesn’t, I had to ask myself: Am I disappointed, or relieved? Different Directions I’m not alone in wondering how I’d feel if my child chose this profession for himself. A quick online poll of my colleagues and classmates confirmed this common mental thread among veterinarians of a certain age. We definitely think about it, perhaps more than we’d like to admit. Despite the fact that ours is a career path most parents would embrace with enthusiasm, "most,” it would seem, doesn’t include us. As it turns out, my decidedly unscientific poll intimated that the stats on a warm reception to the notion of a future veterinarian in the household drops off when it comes to the possibility of our very own vet wannabes. One offered this: "What do I think about my 10-year-old’s obsession with my scrubs, stethoscope and clogs? At the …
Acupuncturists See The Light, Go High TechSeptember 30, 2013 A move is afoot across the globe to make acupuncture high tech.1 As stated by acupuncture’s most innovative researcher, Gerhard Litscher, "[N]ovel biomedical and neuroscientific methods are of paramount importance for the fast and efficient modernization of the ancient Asian healing method.”2 By bringing modern biomedical engineering technology to the field, Litscher propelled enthusiasm for the quantification of biologic responses to a host of interventions, including electroacupuncture, needle stimulation and now, laser activation.3 A 2008 systematic review of laser acupuncture research found evidence to support its application for myofascial pain, postoperative nausea and vomiting, and the alleviation of chronic tension headache.4 Lasers "Laser acupuncture” shines laser light into acupuncture points instead of inserting needles. While any laser therapy unit may be used for laser acupuncture, the high-tech acupuncture laboratory at the Medical University of Graz, Austria, has studied multichannel laser needle acupuncture, which allows for the stimulation of several acupuncture points simultaneously by multiple semiconductor injection laser diodes. Flexible optical fibers deliver the light to the site with minimal loss of intensity. Power density may reach 20 joules/cm2 per acupuncture points, with 30-40mW per needle, and 500 micron diameter spot size.5 Emission wavelengths vary, but …
From No-lo Vet Practice to Profits in 7 StepsSeptember 23, 2013Deciding to retire was a tough decision for Dr. George. He loved the profession. He loved his clients. He loved his patients. But it was time to say goodbye. So Dr. George hired a management company to appraise his practice. That’s when reality suddenly hit: His practice wasn’t worth much. Yet he was counting on it to retire. Dr. George had a no-lo practice! A no-lo practice, as defined by the veterinary consultants organization Vet Partners (www.VetPartners.org), is a practice with no value or low value. The management company sent Dr. George a consultant to help him turn his practice around. He agreed to share what he learned with VPN readers on condition that we not name him. Here are seven pearls to make your practice more efficient and profitable. 1. Control inventory. Inventory is an invisible, sneaky investment that sits on your shelves gathering dust. A smaller inventory means you will be able to move goods before they expire. If having fewer lotions and potions on your shelves makes you nervous, remember that most suppliers will ship products to you overnight—and at no charge. Here are a few of the problems identified: Automatic food orders were still being …
Pet Insurance Usage Continues To RiseSeptember 10, 2013 Veterinarians and veterinary staff often come into to contact with clients who cannot afford to diagnose or treat their pets. Instead, these pet owners are faced with paying for a reduced level of care, if they can afford any at all, or the alternative of having to euthanize their pets. But there’s another, better, option, say those associated with the growing business of pet insurance. The problem is that many pet owners are not aware of the availability or affordability of pet insurance, which places the burden of informing those owners about pet insurance upon the professionals they encounter at the vet clinic. When veterinarians or their staff recommend pet insurance, not only are they helping the pet and owner by ensuring their financial preparation for incurring medical costs, they are helping their business as well. Evidence indicates that insured clients spend much more than non-insured clients and they tend to respond to an animal’s symptoms more quickly, according to experts. These reasons are probably why pet insurance continues to grow more popular. Pet insurance is estimated to be a $510 million a year industry, and …
When Should You Retire?September 10, 2013 I have been telling myself and others I was never going to retire. I truly believed I would just keep working until I faded into the sunset. I started to work for the veterinarian across the street from my home in Mitchellville, Iowa, when I was 11. My first job was to help a sow in dystocia by delivering four live pigs. It was great fun and I was hooked from that point on. I started to help with farm calls on Saturdays and after school and then full time during the summers. When I was in Veterinary School at Iowa State University the great practical experiences I had in junior and senior high helped me put context to most everything we were taught. The hands-on experience was invaluable during professional school. Early in my career I wanted to practice companion animal surgery in private practice, which I did with my mentor/partner from Iowa, Dr. Don E. Sceli, who had moved from Mitchellville to Phoenix and had started a companion animal practice. We practiced together for six years and started three practices. Eventually we sold the practice and I returned to Iowa State University to …
Callback Programs Can Generate $404,000 A YearSeptember 10, 2013 At Main Street Veterinary Hospital in Flower Mound, Texas, every technician and client-service representative calls four clients per day with overdue-patient reminders. Employees submit completed call sheets daily to a manager. Main Street Veterinary Hospital pays employees $5 for every overdue preventive care visit that gets completed. "Some staff earn $75 to $80 extra per paycheck, so it’s a big incentive,” says Practice Manager MaryBeth Soto, CVPM. If the hospital paid a $75 bonus, the employee would have booked 15 overdue preventive care exams. According to the 2013 AAHA Veterinary Fee Reference, 8th edition, the total for an adult canine preventive health visit is $208, while cat owners spend an average of $186.1 Based on industry norms that 60 percent of patients are dogs and 40 percent are cats, you’d have nine dog exams at $208 each and six cat exams at $186 each for a total of $2,988—a great return on a $75 investment. Talking to the Clients While callbacks can produce immediate revenue, the primary purpose is to be patient advocates. Remember, dogs and cats can’t answer phones, check email or drive to …
Adding Grooming To Your Practice: What Now?August 22, 2013 You have decided to add grooming to your veterinary practice; smart move! A grooming service can provide additional conveniences for your pet families, while also putting another set of eyes and hands on your patients to detect potential health problems. If you have seen the potential, the decision may have been easy. But integrating the new service may not be as easy without keeping some things in mind. The Groomer It's not easy to find a good groomer. Looking through the "help wanted" ads in veterinary journals and websites, it seems everyone is always looking for groomers. "The hardest part is finding that right person who will work with the veterinary practice team to become an extension of the services it can provide," says Tim Thompson, DVM, partner and Medical Institute Director for VitalPet, a Texas-based group of veterinary hospitals where the mission is, "Quality medicine in a caring family environment." In his practice, the current groomer grew up in that family, previously working as a receptionist, and was sent to grooming school to come back and fulfill that position. She was already part of the team. One way to make sure …
Explaining Finances With ConfidenceAugust 7, 2013 When Tyson, a 14-week-old pit bull puppy, was playing with another dog, he fell off the couch and fractured his leg. The pet owner had funds available on his MasterCard for the $1,000 surgery but didn’t want to max out his card. Maureen Lovett, front desk supervisor at Rutland Veterinary Clinic & Surgical Center in Rutland, Vt., explained financing through CareCredit. The client put $500 on his MasterCard and financed the balance. "About 25 percent of our clients need a little extra help beyond their credit cards,” Lovett says. Having access to financing was a win-win outcome for the client and clinic. In 2012, Rutland Veterinary Clinic’s clients financed $208,550 through CareCredit. The AAHA-accredited general practice with four veterinarians also offers emergency care and orthopedic surgery. Communicating When you communicate with confidence about finances, more clients will accept the level of care that their pets need. Here are the tips I offer when I coach teams on communicating about finances. Choose the right words. Say "treatment plan” instead of "estimate.” "Treatment plan” emphasizes needed medical care, while "estimate” is simply about money. Also update forms in …
