As different as associates' experiences are, they generally enter practice with four concerns. Dr. Philip VanVranken, the managing partner at Dickman Road Veterinary Clinic, a seven-doctor practice in Battle Creek, Mich., offers his insight from 30 years of experience and provides some quick mentoring. Here are his answers to four common questions.
If a management vacuum occurs in the practice, then someone will fill it.
Make Yourself More Valuable/Practice Management
Think your practice could benefit from some expert help? A consultant may be the way to go. But it's not enough to just hire help. You must know what you want to accomplish, pick the best-qualified consultant to help, and act on his or her advice.
Many practices are set up as S corporations for tax reporting purposes, enabling owners to receive dividend payments that aren't subject to Social Security tax. Doctors usually receive these payments when the practice pays for veterinary services and management.
Remember, most clients won't appreciate the seriousness of periodontal isease until they see it.
News travels fast in my clinic. How can I keep information private until I'm ready to disclose it to my staff?
Our long-time office manager isn't keeping up with our growing practice. She did an excellent job for almost 10 years, but during the past few years, she's lost the practice money because she can't manage the increased patient and billing load. How should my partners and I approach her? How much severance should we offer her?
I know that an associate veterinarian who's juggling a hectic schedule, a crazy personal life, and pressure-packed workdays can easily get lost in the minutia of the moment. Before you realize it, weeks, months, and even years can float by. At the same time, critical decisions?about your career, your cash flow, and your potential?can get pushed to the back burner, or worse, never even considered.
Matching associates and practices is an ongoing challenge. How do you find an associate? What can you do to make your job offer attractive? What steps can you take to nurture an associate along his or her career path? How can you retain a long-term associate or potential owner?
One trick I learned was to construct my invoices so I did not draw attention to my hourly rate.
Rather than just treat existing oral disease, promote the importance of preventive dentistry to clients when their pets are young.
My team finally convinced me that it's time to repaint. I like white, but am I just boring?
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.
Worried that your employees aren't working effectively? Try a tip from Ethics4Everyone, by Eric Harvey and Scott Airitam (Performance Systems Corp., 2002).
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.
Follow this step-by-step guide to figure your current value to your practice. Then adopt four key strategies to make sure you're worth your weight in gold.
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.
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.
