Building Your Practice Team Flag

The "client-centered" habits that build most practices during those first few years after the doors opened soon shift to a "bottom line" fixation on the Profit & Loss statements. Then the "flag" of caring for clients often changes to caring about the average transaction fee and gross sales (neither of which have a “net income” insight). The staff starts to fret about their "bonus" rather than client satisfaction. The veterinary practice of the new millennium must do more with less. The margin of profit has dwindled. A business cannot spend the gross, it can only spend net! The reason for the dwindling net varies with the practice from increased community competition, to veterinary price wars, to poor management techniques, to under-utilized veterinary extenders. Regardless of the cause, the best tools available to change trends are the human resources within the practice. Veterinarians work hard to produce the gross, but the paraprofessionals are the ones who can easily increase the practice net.