Four Things We Do That Make No SenseJanuary 9, 2012 Arguably, we all do strange things in daily practice. Some are acceptable, and some…not so much. Let’s go over four classic no-nos. 1. Wearing a mask that covers your mouth, but not your nose. I have seen several doctors and technicians wear a surgical mask that covers their mouths, but not their noses. The explanation is typically that they “can’t breathe” when the mask covers their noses. Since there is no reported case of someone suffocating while wearing a surgical mask in the history of modern medicine, it is imperative to understand that masks are important to protect our patients as well as ourselves. The mask decreases the risk of microbes being blown onto or into our patient. This is especially critical at a time when a strikingly high percentage of healthcare professionals have been found to harbor MRSA in their nostrils. Scott Weese, a board-certified internist-turned-infectious disease specialist at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College (Canada), agrees: “The nasal passages harbor a wide range of bacteria, including a multitude of opportunistic pathogens. If someone is taking precautions to prevent contamination from oral bacteria, it makes no sense to neglect nasal bacteria, since the chance …
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Can An HMO Help You Achieve Professional Bliss?January 6, 2012 While many veterinarians are struggling to make pet care affordable through third-party payment, compromise, pet insurance and—let’s face it—discounts, designing an in-house health maintenance organization is the natural progression of this thought process, says Louise Dunn, a practice consultant at Snowgoose Veterinary Management Consulting in Greensboro, N.C. An HMO is fair to the practice as well as the client, and it enables pets to receive the best possible preventive care year round. Some corporate practices, as well as some private clinics, have already embraced the idea. Although HMOs tend to have a bad reputation in human medicine, the concept in veterinary medicine is very different. The plan is set up and managed entirely by the clinic, not by a health insurance plan. Plan components are chosen by the clinic, not by a distant, faceless administrator. The fees are chosen by the clinic, not dictated to please shareholders. When you are ready to start the process, consider these seven steps: • Sit down with a few key team members to brainstorm about the opportunity and weigh the pros and the cons. • Design different plans, offering an increasing number of services and products as the level (and fee) …
Financing A New Building In This EconomyJanuary 5, 2012 The current economy has given rise to many questions about how a veterinarian should go about financing the construction of a new facility. The buzz in the marketplace is that construction costs are not coming down, appraisers are approaching the market conservatively and banks have tightened credit standards for real estate lending. All these statements are true. But many veterinarians just don’t have enough space to continue to grow their businesses and need new facilities. Will all this news prevent a veterinarian from securing the needed funds to build her building? It doesn’t have to. There are different financing options and one of the scenarios can work for your situation. The market has three primary products available for veterinarians looking to construct or renovate their facilities: conventional bank financing, SBA 504 loans and the SBA 7(a) loan product. The best loan type for your project depends on the appraisal, cash equity injected into the project, current business cash flow, size of the project and additional items important to each lender. As you begin your evaluation of the loan products, it is important to consider each loan type and talk to lenders involved with each product. …
Thou Shall Not Judge … Your ClientJanuary 3, 2012We’ve probably all been there, standing across an exam table from a client who doesn’t seem too enthused about sticking a pill, squirting a liquid, or cramming a capsule down the mouth of their pet. So, being good veterinary professionals, we pull out all the advice and tricks of the trade … pill pushers, pill pockets, restraint tips, confidence coaching, you name it. If we still end up with a client that “refuses” to medicate their animal, it is easy to judge them at that point as inadequate pet parents, or worse. It affects our respect for that client, and ultimately, the way we treat them in our practice. Think you can fake it, and not let your inner feelings show? Think again. In fact, let’s think of this in a whole different way. Shannon Fujimoto Nakaya, DVM, wrote a wonderful book called “Kindred Spirit, Kindred Care.” In this book, she encourages pet owners to look at their options and decisions regarding their pets in several different lights. She speaks of how to choose a veterinarian, how to assess the patient, advice on understanding the diagnosis and options, the sometimes limited financial commitments, and …
Baby On BoardNovember 28, 2011 Most of us have heard that there are more female students in veterinary school than male students. This preponderance of estrogen will likely have various effects on the profession, and many of them will reflect the reality that often it is the female who bears the brunt of starting a family. The female of a couple is often responsible for a lot of the parenting. That’s not to say there aren’t “househusbands,” and this may be one trend we see climb in the veterinary profession. But out of necessity or pure desire, Mom will need to make time for her family and begin the challenging task of balancing work and home. Creating a Plan As an employee, the female veterinarian who intends to have children must have a frank discussion with her employer as to what they each expect and will tolerate. This requires the veterinarian to determine what those expectations look like on her end, to see if an agreement is possible. How much time off do you expect to need, depending on the ages and number of children in the household? What shifts can you work, and what times are reasonable for …
What To Say Back When Money TalksNovember 2, 2011It is a scene that’s all too familiar. We know what needs to be done for a pet’s health, but the client cannot afford the care. They come to us for help, but we are stopped short by the tough choices they have regarding how much they can afford. Some people go much further than we’d imagine, even spending kids’ college funds and mortgaging the house to save their pets from extreme illness or injury. But we’ve also seen people who think the veterinary profession should provide care even when they can’t pay for it. When we have to explain that the pet owner is responsible for funding the pet’s treatment, they often question our emotional attachment to animals in general, or accuse us of letting a pet die. This is when veterinary medicine is the toughest, when we are made to feel responsible for their inability to pay. What do we do when faced with this situation? Which of several options we use will depend on the situation and the client’s frame of mind. The Humorous Approach Sometimes, particularly with clients who comment on the price but don’t seem to be disappointed or angered by the total, it can …
Are our patients being sold out by Big Pharma?November 2, 2011Only a fraction of the drugs we veterinary professionals use on our patients are actually approved for use in veterinary settings.
Finding Software’s Hidden GemsOctober 31, 2011 Veterinarians would pay closer attention during practice management software training if they realized how much revenue they could gain and how much time they would save. Software companies offer on-site, on-phone and online training with the purchase and installation of software, but many clinic staffers never quite get to the “hidden gems” that can grow revenue and save time. “Especially in this economy, utilizing your software to the fullest is the key to helping your practice grow,” says Stephen McAllister, president of McAllister Software Systems of Piedmont, Mo., the company behind AVImark veterinary practice management software. Information searches, for example, can target patients for specific marketing. “Track who’s coming in regularly and who’s not,” McAllister says. “Or target certain breeds or ages of pets and develop certain programs for groups of clients. That’s captured revenue.” Some software lets practitioners look at how the clinic discounts services and tracks inventory. Integrating the software to track procedures for surgery, lab and radiography, along with reference labs and specialty hospitals, prevents missed charges. Software systems present a variety of communications aids, from educational handouts to e-mail reminders to direct mail. Owner compliance translates into increased revenue. “Through …
Building Bonds To Improve Patient CareOctober 27, 2011 If there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that the ability to build strong relationships with clients and their pets is one of the most defining characteristics of a successful veterinary practice. It’s not rocket science—we live and breathe the importance of this bond. We train our staff to master it, keep our eyes and ears open for new ways to enhance it, and recognize that a practice’s greatest strength can be found in how well it becomes an integral third party in the relationship between owners and their pets. Similarly, could there potentially be additional benefit for a practice that chooses to emphasize building a bonding between individual veterinarians and clients? According to the 2011 Bayer Study, the answer is a “yes,” and the data from the study actually point to this one-to-one relationship between a practitioner and client as a key driver of increased visits. The study found that practices that encourage clients to bring their pets to the same veterinarian for every visit are the same practices that experience increased compliance and acceptance of recommended treatment protocols. It appears that the apparent disconnect between what veterinarians think they are …
Why We Hate Online ReviewsOctober 27, 2011 Here’s a not-very-well-kept secret: Most of us detest online reviews. Why? Well, isn’t it obvious? We know that plenty of people now use them almost exclusively to find their new pets’ healthcare provider (us). So we can’t ignore them. We’re compelled to read them and make sure they say only good things about us—for the sake of our livelihood (never mind our egos). As if it weren’t enough to have one more task to manage, now we’re told by practice management gurus (you know who they are) that we’re supposed to assign a staff member to manage these reviews and sign up for Google alerts to make sure our reputations are squeaky-clean. So it is that our already-stretched resources must be allocated in this direction—stressfully. We know how angst-provoking reading the reviews can be. She said what about me? After all that awesome work I did on her cat? Which, of course, only makes you want to furiously check the timing on your PLIT policy. And invariably, also makes for one downer of a day. Sure, everyone knows a disgruntled client is a hundred times more likely to leave a negative review than a perennially …
