Let's face it: our clients are online.  15 years ago, when a pet owner had a medical question they’d go to their veterinarian first then go home and research what they heard. What do they do now? Most pet owners go online first THEN call the veterinarian if they think their problem is worth an office visit.  With the explosion of smart phones, I’ve had clients literally researching what I’m telling them WHILE I’m talking to them!  I didn’t find it threatening….as a licensed veterinarian, I should know what I’m talking about….but it was an indicator of a new reality.

I recently returned from the AVMA headquarters in Schaumburg, IL after attending the most recent Veterinary Economic Strategy Committee meeting. We had two days of discussions about the future of veterinary medicine and, as always, it was very enlightening. While I can’t summarize the entire conference in one blog post, a few things stood out.

These four easy-to-use tools provide insight into your practice from your client's perspective. Take a spin-through to see how pricing, marketing, record sharing, and accounting contribute directly to revenue.

4 Simple Tools to try:

• Grade your marketing at Marketing.grader.com to get an overview of your entire online footprint and learn ways to improve right away.
• Assess your pricing at Zoetisus.com, a patented method for determining fair service pricing. Are you charging too much? Too LITTLE?
• Improve communication with VitusVet.com, a robust records-sharing software that shares records with your clients and other veterinarians online and on a smartphone app. (This is our company)
• Stop losing revenue with Smartflowsheet.com, a tool that improves patient care and profitability through organizing in-patient treatment.

I’ve written about veterinary excess capacity before, namely that there are too many veterinarians chasing not enough clients. So how do we fix that? Well, there are two broad possibilities: reduce supply and increase demand. As I’ve alluded to before, the former is far easier said than done. Whatever we as a profession will be able to do about veterinary supply will happen at such a slow pace that you should not consider it in your budgeting and short term strategic plans.  You might as well assume that supply will remain high for the foreseeable future.