Consulting Service
Senior Advisory Meetings
Senior advisory meetings are a forum to help our clients manage their practice through improved awareness and focus of resources. The meetings are held monthly or quarterly depending on the needs of the Practice, and are typically attended by the owners and appropriate senior management of the Practice and representation from our senior staff.
The forum includes identification and monitoring of key performance indicators (KPI’s). KPI’s can cover all aspects of both financial and operational performance. We work with our clients to establish KPI’s for their practice and to address barriers to having the reliable data needed on a timely basis. The senior management meetings are based on the use of the KPI’s as the foundation for helping to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and trends.
It is generally a lot easier to manage a practice from an informed position. Practices that invest the time to maintain reliable financial/operational performance data and use it will see better results. The 2005 AVMA-Pfizer Business Practices Study reported that practices that monitor financial information on a timelier basis experience about a $42,500 increase in income just from “paying attention to the numbers.”
The senior advisory meetings and KPI monitoring are designed to provide the owner and senior management of the practice with a forum to focus on improving practice performance through establishing direction, goals and action plans.
At Lacher McDonald & Co., CPAs, we work to stay abreast of trends developing in the business side of veterinary medicine. Being accountants by training we are knowledgeable about the story being told by the financial numbers of your practice. We pride ourselves on the ability to ask the questions that help you achieve the success you have defined for your practice and personal financial life.
Financial Statement Surveys
We view our role in the financial reporting process as an opportunity to provide constructive solutions for maximizing your practice’s profitability and efficiency. We help our clients develop their internal accounting systems to ensure monthly financial statements are prepared on a timely basis. These financial statements become instrumental management tools.
We will teach you how to take selected information from your Practice Management Software and input this information into your accounting software on a monthly basis. Combining this information will allow you to have meaningful financial statements which you can use to make informed management decisions.
We survey your financial statements and other Key Performance Indicators on a monthly or quarterly basis depending on your needs. The purpose is to provide you an objective “outsider’s view” of what is working well or needs improvement in the areas of accounting, profit margin, and overall profitability within your practice. These surveys are a foundation for your senior advisory meetings.or advisory meetings.
Inventory Management
Inventory or Cost of Goods Sold is the second largest expense in a Practice. It is second only to total payroll. How you handle inventory will have a direct and significant impact on the profitability of your Practice. We work with our clients in three primary aspects of inventory: purchasing, managing, and pricing. Some of the common questions we address are:
Purchasing: Should we have six vendors or twenty six? When is a “deal a deal?” How much inventory is too much? How often and how much should we order?
Managing: Who should be responsible for managing inventory? Do we need to offer every heartworm preventative on the market? Should we be using our computers more to help track inventory? What about hospital usage items?
Pricing: How often should we update our prices? How do we know if our prices are too high or too low? How do we compete with the internet pharmacies?
These are just a few of the questions that we help our clients answer every day. The Practices that know the answers to these questions are often more profitable (and less stressed out about inventory!) than those that do not.
Compliance Issues
Are your clients adhering to your recommendations? How do you know?
One of the reasons you have chosen your profession is to deliver high quality care to your patients. One of the ways to insure that the care you feel is important is actually given to your patients is to read Pathways to High Quality Care, a publication of the American Animal Hospital Association, do the Compliance measuring tool, and then set about increasing the follow through on recommendations made.
When we are asked “How do we increase revenue in our practice?”, one of our first responses is “measure compliance” and then set about increasing it. The benefit to increasing revenue by increasing compliance is that the animals win. Yes, the practice generally makes more money, but more importantly the animals receive the care or treatment that you believe is most important. After all, isn’t that why you chose to become a veterinarian in the first place? When marketing is looked at from this perspective, it is much easier to get staff to buy in which helps guarantee the success of the undertaking.
We have helped our clients use the AAHA compliance tool, interpret the results, develop protocols for increasing compliance and monitor for results. Using the compliance tool technique is a great way to test the effectiveness of your health care delivery in many areas of your practice.
Setting Price
Pricing of your services and products has a direct impact on the profitability of your Practice. Proper pricing is what allows your Practice to buy new equipment, provide for your staff, and provide for your family. Despite this, raising prices tends to be one of the most difficult components of practice management for many practice owners. To be blunt…..raising prices can be scary!
Understanding the difference between shopped and non-shopped services and products is vital. Aligning your pricing structure with your Practice’s standard of care and service philosophy is what matches the fees you charge with the value you provide your clients. We work with you to develop a pricing structure that is tailored to your Practice with the goal of being fair to your clients as well as fair to you, the Practice and your Team.
Staffing
People at all levels from top doctor to new kennel cleaner are:
- Your biggest investment
- Your biggest revenue generators
- CAN be your biggest liabilities
Unless you are a single doctor ambulatory equine practice working 26 hours a day, eight days a week, people are a necessary part of your practice’s life. Having the right people in the right seat of your bus can make a major difference in the success or failure of your practice.
We can help you with selecting the right people – individuals who have the skills you need even if they don’t have 20 years experience working in a practice exactly like yours. We can help you evaluate the staff you currently have to help assure that they are doing the things they should be doing, like to do and in general, help them work to their highest potential.
Having a staff doing the things they like to do and a staff who understands the role they play and who feels they are contributing to the success of the practice will go a long way in keeping them motivated and challenged.
We can help with staff issues and we can help you determine if your people strategies are “feel good” strategies or if your strategies are helping you achieve the goals you have established for your practice.
Practice Wellness Exam
Owning a Veterinary practice should be a dream come true. If it often feels more like a nightmare, there is still hope! Don’t wait until retirement to implement the changes that bring your dream to fruition.
Whether your dream is to increase your take home pay, retire early, spend more time with your family or more time doing the things you love, your Practice Wellness Exam is tailored based on your dreams and your practice.
Your Practice Wellness Exam includes a comprehensive analysis of your financial statements and practice management information. It also includes an on-site visit which provides an understanding of the day to day operations and opportunities of your Practice.
Time Management
There are only 24 hours in a day! In order to get everything done at the Practice AND still have some personal time, consider the mantra “Doctors do Doctor Work!” The doctor is most effective seeing patients. Inventory management, accounting, and drawing blood should be done by other team members.
Through effective hiring, training and delegating, your staff can help you focus on the doctor work. Having written protocols and training manuals available to staff will help standardize the training process. Regularly scheduled staff meetings will reinforce the training and keep the lines of communication open in the Practice..
Delegating work to your staff will get projects done while you are seeing patients. When you delegate work be sure to be clear in your expectations, explain the assignment, set a deadline, be available to provide guidance as needed, and expect results!
As your practice grows, there is less and less available time to “do everything.” Avoid the urge to “do vs. delegate” and you will increase your personal time while maintaining your sanity. We help our Practice owners make the transition from “do everything” to “do appropriate things.” This can be done while still retaining control of your Practice!