Let’sTalk Turkey

BY GREG TONER

Originally published in OVMA Focus Magazine Jul/Aug 2023

What you need to improve your practice

Running a business is a lot like cooking a turkey. I love turkey—it’s my favorite meal to have with a large group, or a small group and eat leftovers for a week. Cooking a turkey is a challenge. For the first few years of my adult life, I always seemed to be cooking it in a different scenario—using various cooking methods (ovens, smoker, barbecue), a range of sizes from four to 12 kilograms (nine to 28 pounds), and room temperature or straight from the fridge because we forgot to take it out early enough. 

Balancing those factors and capturing the data along the way to figure out when dinner will be ready for your hungry family can be difficult.

I started a turkey diary about 12 years ago and made notes on the turkeys I cooked. Size, room temperature or straight from the fridge, brined or not, what else was in the oven, cooking time, resting time, etc. It was a game-changer. Now I have notes on all those turkeys, and I can accurately predict how long they will take to cook.

And my family is always generous with their feedback on our annual turkey, so I can make notes for future turkeys.

To make a great turkey, I found that I need five things:

1. Data on my current turkey.

2. Data on past turkeys.

3. A target to aim for (generally 165°F or 74°C).

4. Feedback from my family on what went well and what didn’t go well.

5. Data along the way to help me pivot as needed.

Your veterinary practice is a lot like a turkey:

1. You know a lot about your current client base, staff and facility.

2. You know how your staff have performed in the past to support your client base using the facility that you’ve provided for them.

3. You’re working toward something (growth, fewer owner hours, a more cohesive team, etc.).

4. You have feedback from your staff, your clients, your family and your bank account.

5. You have data that your practice generates continuously that you can aggregate to help you achieve your goals.

The key to making a good turkey is understanding how your turkey relates to your experience; understanding what it will take to get to your target; having data along the way to help pivot; and feedback to improve next time.

Improving your practice in any way needs the same: understanding where you’re going and what you have; how it’s gone in the past; where to look for data along the way; and how to measure your success.

If you don’t already have one, I recommend starting a practice journal. Take some time to:

1. Describe your current client base, facility and staff.

• Do you mostly work with one species?

• Are there any niches in your practice?

• Does your facility need work?

• Is your equipment ready to be replaced?

• How do your fees compare to OVMA’s Fee Guides?

2. Reflect on how the last six months have gone.

• How was your spring?

• Did you get burnt out?

• Did your staff get burnt out?

• What has your turnover been like?

• How profitable were you?

3. Summarize your goals and objectives for your practice.

• What do you want the rest of the year to look like?

• How profitable do you want to be?

This will give you an overview of where you are today and what you’re striving to achieve.

Define your budget and scorecard

Now the numbers part. You really should have a monthly budget, and monthly financials, to assess your progress toward that budget. Your journal will provide context to those numbers. The budget and budget versus actual analysis will anchor your practice scorecard. Other things that make sense to have on your initial scorecard are:

1. OPERATIONAL

• Appointments booked per day.

• Appointments booked more than 48 hours in advance.

• Missed appointments.

• Surgeries per day.

• How many hours you’re physically in your practice.

2. FINANCIAL

• Revenues by day, month and appointment type (consult versus surgery).

• Expenses: start with your three biggest expense items and add any that you want to watch.

• Profit.

• Cash flow.

Staff happiness is incredibly important, too, but it’s hard to assign a number to it. Make a point of talking to your staff and having casual conversations with them. Know what’s going on with them and get close enough to understand their frustrations and what brings them joy. Add any insights you gain here to your practice journal.

With this scorecard, you can start to convert your goals from your journal to numerical targets for your practice. 

Measure

This should be the easy part, but it may take some time to get the processes set up. You’ll need data from your practice management system and monthly financials from your bookkeeper.

Compare your budget to your actual performance in a spreadsheet. Highlight any major variances, and figure out what can be done to improve on shortfalls and take advantage of areas you’re excelling in. Add your appointment statistics at the top and take it all in.

Reflect

Look back in your journal to remind yourself about what was going on. What should you be changing? What’s working and what isn’t? Where are you spending too much? Where should you be spending more? Are there numbers that you should add to your scorecard?

Make notes in your journal on first impressions of what needs to change. Then talk to your staff about making those changes a reality, and document what the processes are to make those changes. Make sure everyone follows those processes.

 Improve

This is the time to layer in your plans for your practice. What do you want to change? Do you want to add new equipment? Do you want to extend your hours? Is it time to hire a new team member?

If it feels like every day, month and year is completely new and uncharted territory, it’s time to find the commonalities. They’re likely there, but you’re losing sight of them in the day-to-day of practicing veterinary medicine. By defining what success looks like with a budget and scorecard, you’ll give yourself a yardstick to measure yourself, your team and your practice against.

With mechanisms to surface the important data, you’ll have insight into how your practice is really running and be able to reflect on those results. With that, you can decide what needs to change and what needs to be done more.

Greg Toner, CPA, CA, TEP, CLU, is principal at VetCPA.

Reprinted from the Ontario Veterinary Medical Association’s Focus magazine www.ovma.org