Jean Weaver

Is your practice ready for a disaster? Even when your team members and patients are safe, fires and tornadoes may destroy critical records that help you match pets with their owners.

Do client notes disappear after you paper clip them to a patient chart? Do your blood work or hospital notes sneak into the wrong file? Maybe it's time to kick the paper clip habit, says Jean Weaver, hospital administrator at Catawba Animal Clinic in Rock Hill, S.C. "Our doctors would use two or three clips on charts to try to keep notes and educational materials together," Weaver says. "These notes would inevitably fall off or become attached to another chart in the discharge box."

A base plan gives team members somewhere to start, minimizing confusion and panic.

At Catawba Animal Clinic in Rock Hill, S.C., it truly pays to be a longstanding employee.

One challenge of team management: Making sure everyone pulls his or her weight. "We found that our veterinary assistants and technicians like to congregate in certain areas of the hospital, and when someone needed help in another area, they'd kind of look at each other to see who would go," says Jean Weaver, hospital administrator at Catawba Animal Clinic, located in Rock Hill, S.C.—a seven-doctor practice with 33 support staff members.