Benchmarking study measures specialist practices

LONG BEACH, CALIF. — The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) plans to release results of a 2005 Specialist/Referral Benchmarking Study this month to better understand this growing segment.

An eight-person task force formed a survey asking specialists and mobile practices about how they operate their practices.

"We sent out 400 surveys and received 133 back," says Dr. Brent Calhoun, chair of AAHA's Specialist/Referral Benchmarking Study Task Force. "That's a good sampling to start with. One of the goals of this project was to obtain a mailing list of specialty practices. Previously, there was no list."

Calhoun says the task force wants to make the survey an annual event, but that is still undecided.

Surveys were sent to specialists in the field of anesthesia, internal medicine, dermatology, ophthalmology, critical care, surgery, dentistry and radiology.

"A lot of people had to estimate financial questions about their practices because of the time frame in which we mailed them," Calhoun says. "It took several years for us to get really good information like we did with this study."

AAHA plans to release information gathered from the study this month. The association refused to release any preliminary results.