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Help Your Veterinary Staff Work Smarter, Not Harder

April 30, 2021

Veterinary Services Group

Efficiency is critical – especially as veterinary hospitals continue to face high demand for services and as owners and their staff start to feel the effects of burnout. By making sure the current processes allow staff to work as efficiently as possible, you can minimize feelings of fatigue while keeping up with full appointment books. Here are a few areas where you may find efficiencies at your hospital:

  1. Review appointment scheduling. Assess the current schedule and appointment length times to determine whether changes could be made to allow for more patient appointments. For instance, could more responsibility be transferred from the doctor to the technician to allow the doctor to see more clients throughout the day? Is any work being duplicated between the technician and the doctor? If so, you may be able to streamline the existing processes, creating more time for additional appointments.
  2. Create protocols and treatment plan templates. Identify the most common services provided by the hospital and work with the doctors to create protocols for the best treatment plans for these cases. These protocols can be particularly helpful with the flow of the appointment and consistency in treatments. They can also better prepare the staff to anticipate the doctors’ needs for various cases. Once the protocols are complete, you can create and add treatment plan templates for these services to the practice management system. Staff can also utilize these templates to speed up the checkout process and ensure that the correct charges are being included on each pet’s invoice.
  3. Use technology to the fullest. Whether allowing pet owners to provide pet history details online prior to an appointment, using tools to transcribe doctors’ notes, or forward-scheduling appointments during checkout, technology can be a very effective tool to help you treat additional pets each day. Saving a few minutes throughout the day on small tasks will add up over time, ultimately allowing doctors and staff to focus on generating additional revenue.

By reviewing your hospital’s current processes, you may be able to identify areas where staff can “work smarter, not harder” and make the most effective use of their time. This will not only help with increasing the hospital’s bottom line, but it may relieve some stress, too. For more tips on how to improve the efficiency of your hospital, download our Veterinary Guide to Best Practices, Vol. 5, or contact KSM’s veterinary consultants.

A Guide to
Best Practices

Learn how you can run a healthy, efficient, and profitable veterinary hospital.

Download the Guide