Gerald Snyder, VMD

Re-energizing your staff isn't easy, but it can be achieved with a little determination.

Each day provides an opportunity to offer some nuggets of education.

How much of your income is due to your performing surgery? Perhaps 15 percent? Even 20 percent?

The mean hourly wages of veterinary technicians and assistants were recently reported to be $12.90 and $9.90, respectively, as of March 2005. That was two years ago, so I would predict those figures will increase by 10 percent – to $14.14 and $10.90 – by the time you read this.

Everybody loves detailed estimates. It's just that practices cannot afford them. The labor is just too costly.

All life forms appear to have a central inner drive - a soul, a balance of yin and yang or one of many other concepts that are more than this publication, I am sure, wants to address. This is not about religion.

The next five years will be remembered by the survivors as a time of chaos; a time of reordered priorities and a time of major adjustment. I'm sure that Nostradamus said something or other about this event.

Before graduation we should have been taught how to use these surrogates profitably.

What a pity that respect is not an edible commodity.

Taking a half hour or so to input any bundles saves hours and prevents missed income...

After 30 years of practicing small animal and exotic medicine, I found myself doing exploratories on the business of veterinary medicine.

Evolution is a most awesome force, and it is seldom, if ever, benign. Right now, mankind tops the food chain, but for how long is anyone's guess. Like the characters in the Jurassic Park epics, we will fall and be replaced someday, probably by something that the current flea products don't protect against. The Earth is neither our friend nor our enemy. It just is what it is, providing us with sustenance on one hand and catastrophic devastation on the other.

Does it seem that no matter how hard you work, you just can't seem to get ahead?

Not using demographically determined fees eventually leads to mediocrity or worse.

Veterinarians are paid by leftovers; that is any money left over after all other obligations have been satisfied.

Just ask a client which part of the anesthetic monitoring or pain relieving medications you should leave out to save them money at the expense of their pet's health.

Practices whose staff are so well treated that they feel like family may be harder to compete with.

Clashing practitioners who stay together too long compromise toward a central level of mediocrity.

Practitioners charge too little because they cannot keep up with the literature.

Being in your own business is working 80 hours a week so that you can avoid working 40 hours a week for someone else.

It is long past time to modify our practices to fit the times and increase the quality of relations between veterinarians and their indispensable support staff. Why are we so quick to remodel our hospitals, run to buy ultrasound or digital X-ray equipment yet so slow to invest in our staff?

Mathematics is a lovely endeavor. It is straightforward, honest and without complications. Life, on the other hand, is filled with un-asked for permutations that drive us up walls, which when fully considered using Newtonian physics is a practical impossibility.

Identity crises are for other people. I am what I am. I'm a veterinarian and proud to wear that title.

Domineering management styles can force the best employees out the door

Have you ever stopped at a traffic light or just walked through a new section of town and inhaled the smell of garlic coming from a local Italian restaurant or the unmistakable aroma from a BBQ eatery? When you are paying the bill, do you ever wonder how you made the decision, spur of the moment, to fill up with pasta or ribs?

The interview stage is where we separate the women from the girls, the marrow from the bone, the competent from the inept. This is where we decide who is to receive our largesse and enjoy the not-so-great employment opportunity we offer so magnanimously.

Welcome back to this continuing soap opera we call: The Productive Veterinary Hospital. This month on "St. Anywhereelsebuthere", we go boldly forward where few have gone before. I speak of the world of part-time employees.

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

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.