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Five Ways To Increase The Profitability Of Your Veterinary Practice

It can be difficult to operate a successful veterinary practice, but the following are a few tips to help increase your profits.

Decrease the time spent with customers

If you are able to decrease the average time spent with a customer by only a few minutes, you will be able to handle more daily visits to your practice. Although this is obvious enough, it is not always easy to implement. You need to first measure the amount of time spent with each pet owner, and then compute an average. Don't simply take the total amount of time spent at work and divide by the number of appointments you have completed. Once you have an average time, you can begin to look at ways to pare down a few minutes. If you can bring down your average time per patient, you will be able to see more customers.

Increase the number of visits with reminders

You should focus first on your current customers. Using a customer mailing list or email list, send friendly reminders of annual or periodic check-ups for their pets. In addition, after appointments are made, have someone in your office make a phone call or send a text message to remind them of their appointment the day before. This will reduce cancellations and no-shows.

Make sure local pet owners know about your practice

No matter how long you have been in a community, people come and go. There are likely many people who are not aware of your practice. You need to have a good website that contains all of the information pet owners are looking for when shopping for a veterinarian. In addition, make sure all relevant information is included in business pages that are offered by major search engines.

Keep inventory levels low

In the age of the Internet, people are buying their pet medications online. Either that, or they are purchasing from large discount pet stores. You should focus your practice on services and not products. This includes pet supplies that are not directly related to medication or care of the animal while at your office. Carrying unnecessary inventory is costly. Your practice should focus on service and not retail sales. Carry only the inventory you need to treat your animals.

Buy used equipment

It is not always possible to find used veterinary equipment for sale, but when you can, you will save money. Not only will the initial cost be lower, but the depreciation of used equipment will be less than the same models bought new.

The tips above will help your practice in both a good or a slow economy. Keep them in mind, and you will have a good chance at higher profits.


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