Practice Management

The best way to educate clients is by combining dialogue with visual aids.

Everyone loves free stuff?and practices often receive free scrubs, totes, pet food, and more. But how do you make sure you distribute the bounty fairly? "We hold a yearly raffle and give the year's accumulation of gifts as prizes," says Beth Montoya, office manager at Pembroke Veterinary Clinic in Virginia Beach, Va.

This year will likely be a lot like last year, if you expect it to be. Why? In general, we get what we expect.

Despite the fun of the holidays, the season leaves many people stressed out instead of refreshed and ready for the year ahead. With these tips from Vitality magazine, you can relax and enjoy 2005.

Good employees, those with the work ethic and constructive attitude needed to make your practice prosper, must not be infected with Apartment-Car Syndrome.

The usual encounter starts with a progress-notes entry for the client concern, a weight (hopefully sequential with a body-condition score), a TPR, a BP, lead II ECG, tonopen screen and maybe even a urinary kidney screen.

Of course, you use keys and locks to keep valuables secure, but you lose some of the benefits if you don't control the keys. Think about these questions to decide whether you need to tighten up security:

Bit & Spur Animal Hospital in Mobile, Ala., was about to begin a senior pet care plan. But hospital manager Kelley Wilbur knew they needed a better system to recognize senior pets.

The first lesson I try to implant is that average ain't good enough today.

I have been made to observe the following video clips in order for Baldy to better understand our approach on planet Earth.

Making money doesn't guarantee a successful and rewarding career or an enjoyable retirement. What you do with the money's far more important.

One of the most often-used consultation summaries, in my experience, comes from the comments on creating our own day.

Minimally invasive surgery is a rapidly developing discipline in veterinary medicine, thanks to its widespread use in human medicine. During the past 20 years, veterinarians have watched a temporally similar development with arthroscopic surgery. While minimally invasive surgery has many advantages over traditional open surgery—including reduced postoperative pain, reduced recovery times, and improved operative results—there is a caveat: It requires specialized training and considerable experience. In this article, I'll focus on one particular minimally invasive technique—intracorporeal suturing.

They might even have to turn off their cell phones and occasionally work a little unpaid overtime for the common good.

What does your staff think of your practice? Are staffers proud of their work? Do they think you offer good services and that you provide value? Do they enjoy working for you? Do they want a career with you, or are you just a temporary paycheck? What do they see as your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats? Will the answers from lay staff differ from those of associates?

We live in a time when polymer chemists work magic with different suture materials to give them specific properties that benefit surgeons. Today's sutures absorb within a consistent time frame every time veterinarians use them, possess specific handling characteristics, demonstrate good knot security, and cause minimal tissue inflammation.

Imagine exploring the thoracic cavity and performing surgical interventions without using an intercostal or a median sternotomy.

Meeting the three standards, I was ready for euthanasia.

IIf my mental calculator is not askew, Caryn and I have just completed Veterinary Productivity's 350th in-house, on-site, out-of-town, hotel food AGAIN, practice productivity consultation. Each one of these veterinary entrepreneurs asked us to help improve their bottom lines. Oh, they said they wanted to streamline their services, make sure that they weren't missing any client service opportunities, yada yada yada. What they all really wanted was more money to play with at the end of each month just in case, however unlikely, they ever decided to retire.

Surgical stapling equipment allows the small-animal surgeon to perform a variety of challenging abdominal surgical procedures more quickly and consistently than with conventional, hand-suturing techniques. This article will summarize the use of these devices.

Ever wonder if there is just one customer satisfaction survey question that could accurately predict company growth? Consultant and author Frederick Reichheld spent two years researching that question, and published his findings in the Harvard Business Review.

What do I do with a relief veterinarian who doesn't stick to my fee schedule?

The last client and patient left, the phone stopped ringing, and the day's receipts are tallied. It may seem like time to go home, but first you need to make sure your practice is protected.

Of course, companies of every size are striving to attract and retain great people. Could you adapt any strategies from these giants in the realm of great employers?

Looking to reduce your tax burden? Well, in 2004, you can expense up to $102,000 of new or used equipment purchases. A 50 percent bonus depreciation expense also is available in 2004, but it will expire at the end of this year unless congress extends the provision. Bonus depreciation applies to new equipment purchases and to leasehold improvements for those who own a practice but not the real estate.

When you are attending a conference paid for by your hospital, your goal should be to learn as much as you can to share with the rest of the team.

In recent articles I have talked about better recordkeeping and how to write a job description. Both of these topics have one thing in common: They require involvement from the entire hospital team.

Successful veterinary practices challenge themselves to grow and identify new ways to improve the quality of the veterinary healthcare they provide.

Most part-time employees don't qualify for health insurance, retirement, or other employee benefits. And you must offer fair and equivalent benefits to all team members, regardless of whether they're a new hire or a 15-year veteran at your reception desk. If you don't, you're asking for a discrimination case.

Recently, a veterinarian in the process of hiring a new practice manager asked me "What are the 10 things a practice manager needs to know to be effective?" What a great question! It took a little thinking to narrow the "must-know" list to just 10 items. But whether you're an owner-veterinarian, a practice manager, or the owner's managing spouse, I think you need to apply these strategies to manage the practice effectively.