Lesson 3: Need More Clients? Part 2
TIPS-The Ideal Practice System

Do You Really Need More Clients?
...Or do you need better Client Compliance?

Most doctors feel as if there aren’t enough new clients to go around. But before you run out and spend a bunch of money on advertising or on a bigger yellow page ad, it’s time to evaluate whether you need more new clients or just better Client Compliance.

The AAHA Client Compliance Study found that animals are not receiving the care that veterinarians feel is best for them!

In just the areas of Senior Screenings, Therapeutic Diets and Dental Prophylaxis, the average veterinarian is missing over $500,000 in potential services due to low client compliance. And that’s not even counting the patients that haven’t been in for over a year.

Client Non-Compliance

Q: Why aren’t clients complying?
A: The practice team is not making the recommendation.

Wow! That’s something that can be changed—something that is within the team’s control.

Q: Why aren’t the doctor and staff making the recommendation?
A: The practice team under-estimates:

• The client’s ability to pay and
• The client’s willingness to follow-through

The conclusion of the study is that pet owners want the best care possible for their pets and that you and your staff can greatly influence the level of care they choose.

Q: I think I’ve got pretty good client compliance, so does this study apply to me?
A: Probably. Even the doctors who felt that their compliance percentage was quite good were found to have only 50% client compliance.

The Client Compliance Program

There are a number of essential steps to improving Client Compliance. In order to get where you want to go, you have to know where you are now. To fully understand where you are now, you need to measure your current client compliance.

Measure

Veterinarians have great technical and analytical abilities related to veterinary medical procedures. Now, it’s your turn to use your scientific mind to measure your success with clients.

Inspect what you expect. Measuring client compliance will help you and your staff focus on the right things.

If you’ve never measured client compliance (and most practices don’t), keep it simple. You don’t have to go high-tech to measure client compliance. Sometimes the most effective processes for tracking statistics are the simplest. It’s consistency that’s important.

Below is a simple 3-Step Method for beginning to measure Client Compliance.

What to Measure

PVA

One of the simplest measurements of Client Compliance is your PVA (Pet Owner Visit Average). Because your success with animals depends on your ability to interact with Pet Owners (or Animal Owners), the PVA focuses on your average number of Pet Owner Visits.

For those of you not yet measuring PVA, here’s how:

PVA = Pet Owner Visits divided by New Pet Owners.

Pet Owner Visits (PV) is the number of medically-related Pet Owner Visits—even the free ones—including new clients. If a client drops two animals off for surgery, this is 1 Pet Owner Visit (1 PV). If someone comes in to buy pet food, without seeking medical services, this does not count as a Pet Owner Visit. The PVA is manually counted from the appointment book, not derived from the computer totals.

New Pet Owner (NP) is the number of Pet Owners new to the practice. A New Pet Owner is only counted when the client is expected to return for future visits. Someone passing through the area for 1 or 2 visits is not counted as a New Pet Owner. Be discriminative.

Divide your Pet Owner Visits (PV) by your New Pet Owner Visits (NP). The result is your PVA.

To be most beneficial, it’s best to look at your PVA over an extended period of time. 3 months. 6 months. A year. Once you have your baseline PVA, then it’s best to track it weekly and monthly to monitor trends.

As you develop more influence over your client’s compliance, your PVA will increase. In general, an established veterinary practice with a high level of influence over pet owners will have a PVA of 20 and above.

Recommendation Percentage

Since the primary reason for poor client compliance is not making the recommendation for care, it makes sense to measure how often you are making the recommendation.

• A recommendation must be in writing because in order to fully support you, your
  staff must know what your recommendations are.
• To be most effective, recommendations must be in a highly visible place so you
  and your staff can quickly refer back to them when necessary.
• A recommendation includes when you want to see the patient again. If you do not let pet owners know when you next wish to examine their animal, you have left it up to them to make a veterinary medical decision.
• Depending solely on a reminder card to “re-sell” pet owners on the importance of the next appointment will result in lower client compliance than making the recommendation and scheduling the appointment before they leave the office.

Look through 20, 30 or 40 of your most recent files and count how many records include a written recommendation, including an exact recommendation for when you want to see the patient again. What percentage of files include a recommendation? This is your baseline Recommendation Percentage.

As you start consistently making recommendations, writing them down, and improving your ability to make the kind of recommendations that motivate pet owners to follow though, your Recommendation Percentage will improve. And more of your patients will be receiving the care you feel is best for them.

Appointments Made Percentage

Once you begin measuring what percentage of the time you are making the recommendation, the next logical step is to measure how many pet owners have a scheduled appointment before leaving the office.

Measuring the percentage of Appointments Made (before leaving the office) will help you and the entire practice team focus on building value for your services with the client while they are in the office.

Need More New Clients?

Improve Client Compliance and you won’t always be searching for more and more new clients. You’ll be better at influencing the clients you already have.

• Next newsletter, we’ll continue with the essential steps to the Client Compliance Program.

Fill in your email address below to receive our FREE Practice Tips Newsletter. Email:

Drs. Vickie & Bryan

Know a friend or colleague who would like to "Stop Being a Slave" to veterinary practice? If so, click here and send them an email message letting them know about our Free Practice Tips e-newsletter.




 

 

Copyright © 2006 The Ideal Practice 800-520-4911 vetcoach@vetcoach.com
27636 Ynez Rd., L7-187, Temecula, California 92591