Practice Management

Your scheduling software gives you four more defenses against no-shows.

It is a big decision for both you and your client to refer your patient to a university or other specialty practice for further workup or tertiary care.

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.

What are the possible pros and cons of merging two practices?

How can I find good staff members?

The key to attracting a crowd: Knowing what your clients want and raising your level of service to meet their needs. Then you can tap marketing tactics to spread the word.

We'd like to keep our salaries low in order to minimize Social Security and Medicare Taxes. What's the minimum salary we can take so the IRS isn't breathing down our necks?

Capitalism abhors a vacuum. And perhaps in the short term, it abhors ethics as well.

19 tips to cut back on no-shows and get back to business.

In the days of yore - when vaccinations were king and the veterinarian primarily was a syringe jockey - things were a bit easier, and expectations were noticeably lower. Dogs were just dogs, and cats were perceived as varmints by a large fraction of the population. Thus the 15-minute office call was born, and dinner was ready at 6 p.m.

Agree on the basic care you want to deliver at your veterinary hospital. Write it down. And get all your team members heading in the same direction.

Don't you want to improve efficiency, communication, and revenue? If you're not using electronic medical records, you're losing out on these opportunities.

Hoops-and a little hoopla-are encouraged at Firehouse Animal Hospital in Denver. Dr. Jed Rogers included a basketball hoop in the staff lounge when he furnished his hospital.

The cost to deliver veterinary medicine is increasing at a faster pace than human medicine.

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

The best-kept practice management secret is the rabies ratio.

In the early evening, retirees help Dr. Steve Bishop and his crew at Animal Care Hospital in Phoenix make callbacks, freeing time for receptionists to work on other jobs.

A nearby college or university could give you new business know-how-even if you never enroll.

Use this budgeting tool to capture your revenue, expenses, and amount available for compensation and reinvestment.

Use this four-question litmus test to decide whether you're settling for so-so service.

In the next five years, you'll see bigger practices, more referral and specialty hospitals, more women in practice, and better-integrated technologies. And all these changes will influence your work.

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

If your success is starting to slip, it could be that you no longer offer the care you so eagerly gave clients in the early days of practice. But it's not too late to get back on track.

My first use of timed artificial (AI) insemination came immediately after veterinary college. A prostaglandin product had been approved for horses, but it was expensive. By infusing a fraction of the equine dose into the uterus of a cow with a corpus luteum, it usually could be brought into estrus. Timed insemination has come a long way.

Q. How do I deal with a team member who is going through a personal issue and seems noticeably distracted during work?

Make sure your benefits stack up well against the other options team members could find in your area-and give employees more reasons to stick around.

Q. To help my team members improve their computer skills, I'd like to pay for training classes. But I'm afraid a team member might leave soon after and I won't get a return on my investment. Should I take the risk?

EVERYONE IS CAPABLE OF MULTITASKING, but equine practitioners take the gold medal: driving the truck to the next appointment, talking on the cell phone, writing invoices, and keeping up with new technology. But at what expense? And how can you manage all those jobs and still focus on providing high-quality medicine?