Fantastic new KPI’s to measure your business performance

The last month has been kicked off with a flurry of activity as we invited all of you to our client days. The first two were a huge success (and of course heaps of fun) at the Sofitel in Sydney and Mt Lofty House in Adelaide.

For those of you who attended, you will have been introduced to some of the new performance parameters that we are measuring. For those of you who are still going to come to either our Gold Coast venues or Melbourne, then you still have all this to look forward to.

This year, we introduced the measuring of vaccinations, SR12 injections and general anaesthetics (amongst other things), but these 3 are proving the most interesting. Although many of you may have cursed a bit whilst completing our questionnaires, we feel that looking at these aspects of practice are becoming very important, particularly when we have to plan for what lies in the future for the veterinary profession.

Even after working in the industry for many years, most of you are unaware of how the volume of work is split up in the areas of ‘true’ consultations, vaccinations with health checks and surgical work (utilisation of surgical facilities).

It certainly appears that a significant amount of work is linked to vaccinations and that vaccinations make up a significant portion of consultations. On the other side of the clinic it appears that surgical facilities are generally underutilised (here we do not only refer to GA numbers, but also radiographic equipment, ultrasound equipment and volume of hospitalisation fees). This is somewhat of an unfortunate paradox when one considers that a significant amount of floor space and equipment is allocated to these underutilised areas.

So let’s go ahead and make some quick assumptions about these parameters, what they mean and what we should look at doing:

Vaccination work makes up a significant portion of your consulting work: This means that you cannot afford to lose that vaccination market. The flow-on work generated from vaccinations is essential to ensuring continuing workload for your team. On our client days we address this issue in detail (what to do it a corporate venture opens up near you and they undercut on vaccination prices).

Underutilisation of surgical and hospital facilities: We address these areas primarily as an exercise in making your team more proactive. Here, the introduction of ‘standards or care’ are essential so that the behaviour of each clinician can become a bit more predictable. For example, introducing a standard of care on how to deal with a heart murmur could encourage clinicians to book in a chest radiograph and / or and ultrasound procedure. We have found clinics that have introduced such standards of care can in fact more than double the number of radiographs or hospitalisation fees vs clinics who do not.

But the best KPI of all – The APL Accountants client base is now running at a significantly higher net profit margin than the national average! Yes, you guys are now running at a net profit margin of over 10% whilst the rest of the industry remains at about 8%.

All this and more will be discussed at our full day workshops, and we look forward to seeing you all there.

 

Remaining Workshop Dates:
1. Sunday 11 Oct Melbourne (fully booked)
1. Friday 20 Nov Gold Coast
1. Friday 19 Feb (2016) Gold Coast

Clearly I’m no supermodel

Zack is a dog who is a couch potato and has an unusual life experience. His owners who were once exciting vets have now become boring accountants. They used to bring him into the exciting vet practice every day, now they bring him into a boring accounting office every day. This gives him a unique dog’s eye view on both professions.

Pictured above taking a ‘Power Nap’ at APL Headoffice!

I was going to take this time to tell you a bit about a really good new product called ‘Vet Business University’, when my nose was suddenly put out of joint. Perhaps it’s best to talk you through this – whilst you are reading this article quickly go to www.vetbusinessuniversity.com  and have a look at the home page. The clearest thing to me when I went there was that I HAVE NOT BEEN MADE THE FACE OF THE SITE! Instead, featured there in all his glory is some bony Jack Russell.

Vet Business University is something that has been produced by the team here and it truly does have some amazing content. If you were to enrol in it, you would have access to a complete course in everything that our specialist veterinary business advisors know. They have taken the time to put all their knowledge into concise notes with interactive tools and videos giving you real world advice on how to improve you profits and business skills. Added to that, each lesson has online assessments to make sure that you are retaining and learning – something that has never before been done in the Veterinary industry. This is extremely useful for business owners, practice managers and even just veterinary or nursing graduates who want to prepare themselves for the real world.

I have only one criticism of the site – the skinny Jack Russell should be replaced with a well fed and handsome Beagle – that would round out the home page nicely, no pun intended.

 

Please Note: Many of the comments in this publication are general in nature and anyone intending to apply the information to practical circumstances should seek professional advice to independently verify their interpretation and the information’s applicability to their particular circumstances. In particular, please note that ‘Zack’ is a dog and does not have opposable thumbs so has to type with his nose.