It had been a tough year for this practice.
It began with some shake-ups on the team. This resulted in a wave of hiring and training—a time-consuming albeit important task. The changes were all positive and the practice started out the year in high spirits and enthusiasm, ready to tackle their growth planning goals.
Growth planning requires action
One of the team’s main objectives for the year centered on growing their preventive dentistry procedures and bloodwork screenings.
When it came to planning how exactly they were going to accomplish this, the team devised a clever, yet simple strategy.
The team’s action plan included a reward component, where clients earned a complementary home dental kit if they scheduled their pet’s dental procedure within 30 days of their pet’s normal bloodwork results.
The kit enabled pets to go home with a bag of C.E.T.® chews, a toothbrush and fingerbrush combo kit, toothpaste, and a rewards gift certificate of $25 off next year’s preventive care visit.
The staff had worked diligently all year and really felt their efforts had been paying off. They felt busier than ever—there seemed to be more dental cleanings scheduled each week and things were humming along.
It was with much excitement that they were looking forward to seeing their progress on their first Preventive Care Snapshot report.
Dig deep to see the full story from growth planning
“But, it looks almost identical to last year’s chart!” lamented the staff when they saw their Preventive Care Snapshots side-by-side. I can’t blame them for their initial wave of disappointment, because the chart certainly did look very much like last year’s at first glance.
“Hold on!” I said to the room of crestfallen faces. “You’ve done much better than you realize. Let’s take a look at the data, digging a little deeper.”
The previous year, the practice’s canine bloodwork screenings were at 18% and dental prophys were at 9%. At the end of the first year of their program, they were at 21% and 10% respectively. This might have seemed insignificant to the team at first, but there was actually a larger impact when you looked at the bigger picture.
The practice’s active canine patient base had actually grown by 275 dogs.
That amounted to 22.2% growth in just 12 months!
Now, when we examine our compliance closer we see that the practice actually performed bloodwork screenings on 105 more dogs than the previous year (48% increase), and their dental prophys went from 109 dogs to 147 dogs (35% increase).
Drumroll please… growth planning’s big impact on practice revenue
- Bloodwork screening on an additional 105 dogs at $75 each earned an additional $7,875
- Dental prophys on an additional 38 dogs at an average invoice of $480 for canine dental prophylaxis earned an additional $18,240
Not only did the practice team manage to care for more dogs this year than last, but their staffing changes, improved morale, and positive word of mouth from happy clients had resulted in significant new patient growth.
Overall, the practice’s revenue increased by nearly 14%!
[bctt tweet=”By digging deeper and highlighting the positive progress your teams make over time, you can keep them inspired and engaged in their work.”] This team certainly deserved the celebration that transpired at the conclusion of our staff meeting!
Brenda Tassava is veterinary consultant and veterinary conference speaker. She consults privately with veterinary practices around the U.S. Brenda can be reached at [email protected].
This blog has been updated and was originally published June 15, 2016.
