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.

I recently went to my 20 year veterinary school reunion at Cornell University. There is absolutely nowhere prettier than upstate New York in June, and it was so great to catch up with friends and colleagues, many of whom I had not seen since graduation.  As I drove home, I thought about some of the things I’ve learned over the last 20 years as a practicing veterinarian. Things that I could pass along to pet owners that would also resonate with other veterinarians. Lessons learned, many times, the hard way. Here are 5 things that I believe are worth sharing.

Lesson #1: "A tired dog is a good dog."  We get a LOT of behavioral questions in veterinary medicine.  When I was a general practitioner, I’d have “the talk” with every puppy owner as well as any client who mentioned that their dog was destructive or “high energy”.  Healthy dogs should get AT LEAST 30 minutes of exercise a day...much like humans.  If they don’t, depending on the breed, they will take it out on your walls/furniture/rugs/valuables.  I’ve learned that this rule applies to children too.

It's still WAY too hard for a general practitioner to send a patient to a veterinary specialist or emergency clinic. And the information sharing that occurs once a patient ends up in a referral hospital leaves much to be desired.

Today, referrals are still largely managed through a time-consuming and error-prone process involving faxing, photocopying, and filing paper referrals. This has been the "status quo" for many years, and while it still works, it needs a facelift to maintain effectiveness in the 21st century.

Your pet may have a lurking condition that could spell big trouble if they go to the ER without their full medical records. The pets in this video will tell you all about it.