13 steps to increase client compliance

To get your compliance numbers up, follow these 13 strategies at your practice:

1. Begin at the beginning. Focus on the family-pet bond as you make your plan.

2. Practice high-quality medicine or low-cost medicine–not both.

3. Train, train, and then train some more. Internal communication among team members is as important as external communication with clients. Your training essentially comes down to answering two questions: “How do we do things here?” and “How do we talk to clients about how we do things here?”

4. Get over your reluctance to ask clients for money. According to the AAHA compliance study, fewer than 10 percent of clients will decline a veterinary recommendation based only on cost.

5. Track your compliance efforts. What gets measured gets done.

6. Get everyone on the team involved. Make compliance and improved patient care fun.

7. Uncover “compliance enhancers” that you’re already using or that are easy to add to your repertoire.

8. Use written, phone, or e-mail reminders.

9. Conduct a compliance review of a pet’s medical record before the client arrives for an appointment.

10. Make specific recommendations–oral and written–for the best interest of the pet.

11. Make sure you stock recommended products, such as therapeutic diets, in your practice so they’re readily available to clients.

12. Schedule the next follow-up appointment before the client leaves.

13. Consider using scripts on the phone with clients. For example, “We’re reviewing our medical records and we’ve noticed that Butch hasn’t been in for 10 months. I’m sorry that we allowed this to slip through the cracks. We’d like to get Butch back on track with his healthcare. Could we schedule an exam for him this week?”