Hello everyone. Just let us know if you can, . Well, I suppose if you can hear me just perhaps type in something on the question so I've, I have a feeling that we've got most people on board.
Hi, Eric. David can hear, yeah I can hear fine. OK, that's great.
So we seem to be. Doing OK there, great. We, we've just got about 5 minutes to go, .
Thanks everybody for coming to the webinar tonight. You'll, you'll all be aware we've got . We've got Alan Robinson coming back for the 3rd time, I think Alan, isn't it?
Yeah, this is the 3rd time, Anthony. Yeah, looking forward to this today, it's part two of . Practising good medicine without feeling guilty about it and, and really.
Pricing appropriately for your professional time, we're all very bad at that, you probably know that better than all of us going in so many practises you as you do. Seems to be a common trend among all the practises I go through, . It's just in the nature of the business, I think, and this is the part of the seminar that I want to sort of focus on today is changing the nature of the business to really focus on those professional fees.
And of course, you know, part of your remit is you go into practises and you try and change that mentality around which, you know, is just so important. I think it's, it's so good sometimes, you know, when we're, you know, like myself, a single owner practitioner with, you know, another couple of vets working for me. It can be very lonely, so to have somebody who's a mentor, who's a consultant who can come in and look at it from a slightly different angle is.
You know, it's worth a loss, isn't it really? I think it helps a lot. I've, I've just done 2 days with my, platinum group, working with them on, on various aspects of it.
And one of them I've just interviewed a couple of them for some testimonials, really. And the common theme they keep coming up with, it's really good to come away, mixed with another bunch of vets who are in the same situation or even different situation and share some of that. Information and get new ideas and just refresh the batteries, I think it's really a really powerful thing for them.
Great, well, we're getting very close to the time now. I think there's still a few people coming in, but . I think it would be good to start.
I'm sure having already done two webinars, most of you will know who Alan is, but, Alan is a veterinary surgeon. He was in practise for a long time in, down south. Was it, just remind me again, was it it wasn't Winchester, was it?
That's Swindon and Wiltshire. Wiltshire, that's right, Swindon and Wiltshire. And decided to sell his practise and concentrate more and more on the management consultancy that he'd already been developing.
As you all know, he has for many years been following the trends of the veterinary profession through the Fort Dodge indices, which is a very useful indices for us. It helps us to see what the national trends are and how we're doing against those, . You know, so I'd like to thank you personally for those.
We're hoping finally that Easyet are actually supporting the FDI, so hopefully I can get on that in the, in the very near future, but I have been getting the report, so I kind of look at things and see how we're comparing, and I try and use it as my benchmark to improve cos. I suppose these practises are already selected. Those who are interested enough to put all the data in are probably some of the better practises as well, aren't they, Alan?
Getting data out of any practise system is a mammoth task in itself. So if you're organised to get the data, I think that says something about the practise in the first place. But the good news is, of course, it was restricted to Fort Dodge users with the takeover by Pfizer.
This has probably opened it up to a whole range of other practises, and we can see the index actually expanding quite dramatically over the next two years. Ah, great, so it's going to become even more useful. I think so.
It's it's interesting because the, the index in the UK it is the only country in the world that actually has industry-wide metrics on how, how the industry does. Not even in the states they have anything comparable. So that's a real testimony to you as well.
I mean, it, you know, it has been such a useful thing and I know it's, it's often quoted by the the media as you know, showing trends and it is obviously, you know, really useful. If you don't measure it, you don't know what's happening, do you? Well, it's really, I think vets have a morbid interest in seeing what the rest of the industry is doing, but for me, the, the real power of it is of the internal benchmarking, seeing where you were this time last year, seeing where you want to be this time next year.
And of course there's the tools to do something about it. Alan, am I right to, to send the screen over to you? Are you OK with your presentation and so on?
Yeah, I'm ready to go. Great, OK, so let me just do that. I'd like to just welcome everyone who's on the webinar tonight and .
You know, hope that you find this useful. I'm going to shut up now. I think you all know who Alan is, and I'm looking forward to another treat after the last two webinars.
I'm sure we're not gonna be disappointed. Thanks very much, Alan. Thanks, Antony.
Welcome, everybody. Welcome those who've been on previous webinars with us. Welcome to anyone who hasn't.
I think I've actually called this part one because it's actually, the, the talk that Anthony asked me to give was in this, practising good medicine, part of it, and it actually got such a big subject I've had to split it into two. So perhaps we'll be doing a follow up to this one sometime in the future. .
But just to recap, for some people, if, if you've been listening to the sort of stuff I've been talking about, I'm trying to develop a bit of a theme, of how to generally improve the practise, over time some multifactorial business, to look at, and I'd really put in two parts. So I just want to, review perhaps quickly some of the other key points from the previous webinars, which leads into this one. Is.
OK, start again. So like I said, what I'd like to do is just a quick review of where we've got up to, with this, . Step one in the process was looking for the best clients we have, as I say, to practise the best medicine we can do, to run the best business we can, the better our clients, the better we're able to do that.
That reflects on better staff, better equipment, better operational activity. Now for me, the things that actually build bonded clients is not particularly your veterinary skills. But it's your marketing, it's your promotion, it's your branding, it's your web presence, it's your visibility in the market, particularly in this very competitive market we're finding ourselves in at the moment.
There's corporates, there's private practises is expanding, there's internet, and retail pressure on us that way. So standing out, being different, being visible is very important. Second part of that is then the client practise interface that primarily is your reception desk, it's your phone, capability, it's your staff training and communication internally and externally with that to actually let these clients know, that you are different and that you're attracting the best client.
The key tool that I find works extremely well in practises is preventative healthcare schemes, putting a baseline of healthcare within the practise, within the patient care that says every animal should at least be vaccinated, worm flea control, and then having a system to make that easy, accessible, good value for money for the client. So these healthcare schemes work extremely well to, ring fence and bond in those clients, so it attracts new clients and we contains the good ones you've got. Once you've got that active bonded client and you know who they are, and you're growing that client base, you can then start to practise the best medicine.
Of course, these clients are more willing to buy insurance, they're more, they have a better relationship with the clients. And to be honest, we're not just talking about clients with money here. This is about clients with attitude towards their pets, regardless of the money, they will find a way to look after their pets.
That makes your job as a bit easier to practise. The level of medicine you want to practise. So that was a key step to start us off.
And that was the previous seminar we talked about. If you haven't seen that, I suggest you go back and review that. Things we get from that is better client attraction, better client retention.
The clients come in more often, they're better more compliant with their. Treatments, they're more compliant with their preventative healthcare. They spend more, improves the cash flow, includes the clinical care.
And we've got proof of all those things in health schemes we've set up. We've seen improvements in vaccination percentages, and improvement in insurance percentages, even things like routine dentals have improved. Equally, in an economy where they, where practises under pressure for new clients, these are the strategies that will give you growth in client numbers, not just in numbers, but in quality of client as well.
And that's a real practise builder if you can actually focus on the quality of the client, therefore, your quality of your staff as well. The second issue we, we addressed, it's all right having clients, all right having them come through the door. But in a, in a, in a good practise, we should be able to generate a profit from that.
So what we see in a normal practise for every 100 pounds we take in. A good slug of that's already gone as fixed costs buildings, rents, rates, electricity, etc. A good 40% of that disappears as pure as, as wages to vets, nurses, receptionists, hugely fixed cost heavy veterinary businesses makes it really difficult to eke a profit out of.
Of course, there's the drug costs in that 28 to 30% of our total turnover is purely cost of drugs that we buy and resell. You've done your maths right, that should leaves about a 10%. Profit.
So every 10 pence in every pound is what we get to keep. And that's, that's really the importance of its turnover is the important value. It's the profit we can generate.
But even then, the profit's got to go a long way in terms of tax and repayments, investment in equipment and back into more staff, etc. To grow your practise. So veterinary business is really a very tough business, to be successful in, to, to make a profit, you've got to turn over a lot of money.
You've got to have very good cost control. The other problem is it's not very difficult in the sort of work we do to lose that profit, to give it away. There's a tremendous amount of leakage goes on in the practise that just eats away the profit.
So the money is there, it's just pops off. Usually we haven't collected it. We haven't charge for it.
And this creates a real problem and we're seeing this now with pressure on turnover, costs going up, the economy, more difficult clients to deal with. This is becoming more and more of a problem. We're seeing these profits squeezed and making it really difficult for a lot of practises.
So what we're really looking for within this is not to get more clients, we're looking for better clients, not to make more money, but to make more profit. Now, if we apply the strategies we've talked about with the branding, the marketing, the preventative healthcare, that should generate more clients coming in more often, spending more money, and that's the. Obvious drip feed into the business to keep, keep the coffers topped up.
But what I see happening is that that money going in, like I said, you've got your fixed costs, your wages, and your, building costs, etc. Cover, you've got your drug costs cover, and you've got to pay those first, And that's where the 1st 80-90% of the money goes. And then hopefully there's a bit left over at the end of the year called profit.
Now, where that profit goes, unfortunately, is leaked out in probably 5 key areas of your business. And if we don't plug those leaks, We're going to be in serious trouble. If we do plug those leaks, it's instant profit for no more work.
That's the beauty of the model. The things we're looking at is obviously debt and credit control, which in the current environment is getting worse. Clients are looking for credit.
They're looking for easy ways not to spend the money and, and save the, keep the money in their own bank. And that's really are not the, credit brokers, but they seem to want to practise that art. Even the banks couldn't do it very well.
Mark, mark up stock control, looking after the drug costs, etc. If that's not looked after, there's leakage from there. We reduce the profit on our drugs that we make, which is a major part of our profit makeup.
Not talking about those two things tonight. Really, the important things we want to look at is on the operational side, the stuff that the vets are doing. In the operating theatre in the consulting room.
One, getting the pricing right, making sure things you are selling are priced correctly to incorporate a profit. So there is money in there. We've got VAT increases coming up.
We've got all sorts of issues pricing. Now that involves pricing your preventative healthcare separately from your clinical care, and then of course your drugs is a separate pricing policy. So there's strategic pricing in there.
Second thing, if you don't Charge for what you do, you won't get paid for it, and I honestly believe that that's just put on the invoices all the work they actually did. They would double or treble their profits overnight. Tremendous amount of work done just doesn't appear in an invoice and therefore it's not paid.
And then the third thing is, if we just did the work presented to us, that would give us a tremendous amount more work from exactly the same number of clients, from exactly the same number of patients walking through the door. We don't actually need any more clients. We just need to do the work presented to us.
So it's those two things I want to focus on, particularly the accurate invoicing, the missed opportunities, etc. In that. From what we want to work at and just plug these profit drains from the business.
If we can do that, business will look fine. Now, one of the key areas that we actually discount our clients is this strange, process whereby we seem to have multiple consultation charges, and there's probably very valid reasons that we can have very good reasons for that. .
Consultations, primary consultations, say 20 pounds, and then if we see the animal again, for some reason, we want to charge less for perhaps the same 10 minutes in work, or is it the same 10 minutes? And then even the checkup or the lower charge at £14. But of course, what this does, it starts to deflate our rate per hour.
And this is the important earning unit in practise. We've only got so many hours in the year, in the week, and the month that we can actually generate money. No, that's only about 30 hours a week for your average bet that they can actually earn money.
So if they're earning money at 84 or even 0 pounds an hour instead of the required 120, 130 pounds an hour, that's gonna be a leakage on income. And of course, that's a loss of income for every hour that's done. So, I'm sure there's very good reasons for charging those, but are they valid?
And of course, this is what we've got to figure out. The question I ask that is, which part of your brain are you not using during a consultation checkup that you perhaps were using during a primary consultation? So we need to look into that.
The other thing as a result of that, that happens, and there's some psychology that goes on in here. There's a consultation, one, a primary consultation. There should be so many follow-ups consultation 2s from that, and a proportionately perhaps less number of consultation 3s from that.
But what we actually see is an often a disproportionate number of consultation 2s and threes, which suggests to me that vets often will default to the lowest chargeable unit. They will often default to the cons 3 because they feel they perhaps haven't delivered any value. They've done nothing different.
They haven't done anything for the client, or they feel that the client is not willing to pay the higher fee for what they're doing. Of course, the real danger is that defaults to a free of charge. Don't worry, Mrs.
Jones, don't, no payment this time required. And of course, that is the, the major leakage into your business. So what we discussed in the first webinar, particularly was this average consultation fee actually determines your income rate per hour.
The average of your cons ones by your cons twos and your cons threes is far below your actual consultation, your spouse consultation fee. And this is what determines your rate per hour within a fixed number of hours that we have to work. The corollary of that is obviously if you have a low primary consultation fee, you have an automatically a low average rate per hour.
But of course, If you have then a lower repeat consultation rate, that lowers the average once more. And of course, here's the real danger of it. The more repeat consultations you do at that lower rate, further lowers that rate per hour.
So it's actually becomes a case of the harder you work, the less you earn, which becomes a bizarre situation. The real danger, but the real leakage, of course, is free of charge consultations. The times when we find in the consulting room, we are unable to or feel we're unable to charge the client for a service delivered, despite the fact they've had 10 or 15 minutes of our time.
We've had the building open, we've had the drugs available, we've had the equipment in the back of the building that hasn't been paid for for that 10 minutes. So they're the real danger pieces with this. So what we looked at in the first webinar is, how do we calculate that minimum rate per hour that we need to charge?
That should be our basal rate for charging of consultations, of surgery and everything else we do. And if we can figure that out and then price above that, we then have a, a scientifically determined fee, structure that we can convince our vets is, is really what we need to be. We can talk to the rest of our staff and show them that it's actually a calculated figure that works.
The practise, . Then the other thing we looked at was this compliance. We saw a major drop off between, the cases presented, the, the animals presented with a need for some sort of treatment or intervention.
And there was a major drop off between the diagnosis being made by the vet in the consulting room and the actual procedures being done or taken up by the client. And that was an almost a 55% of the work presented was not done. 55% of the work.
Walk back out the door again. And the biggest drop off of that work was between the vet making the diagnosis and the vet making the recommendation to do something about it. So again, there was something in there that stopped vets from actually recommending it.
And when the study was further studied, it came to the fact that cost or the perceived cost or the perceived ability for the client to pay for that, Procedure was what stopped vets from actually recommending at all. So the recommendation, in many cases was not even made. And in those cases where the recommendation was actually made, it was made in such a way that the client just didn't understand what the vet was on about.
So it was filled with jargon. It was confusing. There was too many choices.
There was no obvious benefit to the client for doing it. It was just a complete communication misunderstanding. Now, I don't want to go into this too much, but what it basically told us, it's very easy for me to sit here and say, just put your prices up to this level, and everything will be OK.
What we actually need to figure out is there's a, a quality piece that we as vets have to understand, and the quality is the percept in the perception of the client's mind. How do we increase the quality of our professional time in the client's view? That's the important part of it, because, we view this very differently.
Couple of things we came up with and again if you want to look at and listen to this more, go back to the first webinar on on the website and have a look at this, but one with some communication skills, asking open questions involving the client, getting them to understand, More involving them in the decision-making process. This comes back to, the crux of the matter. What vets are interested in is the disease, which is the state of the patient.
What we often fail to address is the illness, which is the psychological and physical impact that disease has on the client. Of what they're going through, of the dog vomiting overnight, of the, animal in pain, of not being able to get pills, etc. And it's only by asking open questions can you actually understand the client's perception of the disease.
We're we're trained pathologists to look at disease. You need to be a trained, almost psychologist to understand the illness. Again, that's just something, be noted.
That leads us to what is of value to the client, and often the value is not in the diagnosis, certainly of value to the vet and certainly necessary to lead to a prognosis. But the real value to the client is, so what's that mean to me? Is it going to get better, which isn't the prognosis?
Unfortunately, in the consultation process, that's the piece that is often left out, particularly in in, in very short 10-minute consulting processes, because we haven't got that time to investigate. The third factor we, we identified quite strongly here was lack of consistency within practise protocols. Not everyone was recommending the same things.
Not everything was done in the same way. There wasn't a consistent process to make sure that these things happen. And putting this together, this created a major, loss of potential income with this 55% of work just not being done.
So now addressing that is important, and we sort of came up with these rules that this needs to be a management issue to be addressed from a management perspective, leaving bets to their own devices, they will act in their own. Quite well-intentioned way, but often poorly performing in regards to the practise business. Knowing your professional time, being able to charge for that appropriately, setting these fees and charges from a profitable, worked out level, rather than putting a finger in the air and looking at the neighbouring practise to see what they're charging, knowing that hourly rate, implementing that, working with your vets, communicating with the vets so they understand why these charges are important.
And obviously, understanding the effect of freebies, no, no, the discounts and the giveaways that we do quite readily for, . More social reasons than anything else. And of course, in that a capability, and that's a learned, skill to add value to the work presented to us.
Those things, will make a huge difference to vet's ability to earn income in the process. So that's a basic that needs to be addressed before we do anything else. It's the basic self-worth of us as veterinary surgeons in the consulting room, our worth to the client and being able to sell that to them.
OK. So we addressed this, not charging for everything we do, not giving it away, and this discounting professional time. We've covered that and we've kind of got the, the basics in place.
The two things I want to look at tonight, in particular, this failure to recommend treatment, of doing the extra work. Getting a primary consultation is a reactive process. We wait there, we wait for animals.
The client hopefully will come to us, and then we can see it once. What happens then? What are the, what's the potential for further work from there?
I am talking professionally and ethically, of what we should be doing, and this is about our standards of care and practising the best medicine we can, helping the the patient. Primarily, and presenting options to the client of how we can do that. The second thing is then, the ability to come up with good, sound, best medicine protocols.
Again, addressing, everyone goes on CPD, they learn about cardiology and ophthalmology and Oncology, etc. And you just wonder, where does that all CPD go to in the busy 10 minute consultation. It just ends up being facetious really, a shot of pen strip bets and see you in a week.
That's not good medicine in most cases. So you've had a bit of review and talk about this proactive medicine and really look at this clinical protocols as such, from there and how that applies to invoicing. So, first thing that's happened obviously from a primary consultation is the re-examination.
At what point do we re-examine animals, how often should we re-examine animals? And of course, we how do we charge for re-examinations. There is a difficulty in many bits, .
Capability of having a healthy animal presented back to them a week later, because they would have wanted to see it as they probably as they should have done clinically. But of course, if the animal's better, how do we charge for that? And of course, they say, the client isn't willing to pay for that, the animal's better anyway.
So there's something wrong in that process, but still, what we could look at is, are we practising the best medicine we can? Like I said, one of the key problems is, is, well, we have the primary consultation, and then we have a level of follow-up consultations, be it cons 2s or cons 3s or, or further beyond that. I've had some practises with 8 different consultation charges for some strange reason.
But basically, if we address that minimum pricing category, my suggestion should be there should be a primary consultation. And then there should be subsequent consultations. Are the two basic consultations.
The primary consultations are reactive. We wait for the client to present them to us. Subsequent consultations should be proactive.
It should be something that we implement at the needs of the client's clinical cases. So what for this conversation, what we're gonna address is the primary, the sick animal presented. We're excluding vaccinations, we're excluding routine work, etc.
This is primarily being presented with sick or injured or broken animals in some sort of case that need ongoing treatment oversight, which is a major part of the work. So, In every practise, and this is something you should do in your own practise, is measure the ratio between primary consultations and subsequent consultations. Every practise ends up with an average ratio.
Of consultation, primary consultations to substant consultations. Now, in this practise, it's something like 81%, which is particularly high. So what this tells us, for every 100 primary consultations, this practise, the vets in this practise have 81 of those back for a second or third consultation.
Now, in my thinking, if an animal is ill. When you see it, you, it comes into you. It's in your consulting room for 10 or 15 minutes.
You give it some injections. Perhaps you give the client some pills, you give them some advice. They walk out the room.
Nothing magical has happened in that 10 minutes. When the animal leaves your room, it is still ill. Therefore, it is still under your care.
Now, If it's been advised, well, take the pills, if it's no better, bring it back. There's kind of an abdication of your responsibility of looking after that case professionally. Even if you say, well, there's your pills, there's an injection, bring it back in a week.
Of course, only 2 things are gonna happen in a week. It's either gonna get better or it's going to die. Now, if it gets better and they bring it back, or if it gets better and the client decides not to bring it back, there's lost income.
But what's happened in that week, a lot could happen in that week, but that we've had no control over. So, What we had in our practise was what we called our 48 hour rule. And this is how we, we managed follow-up consultations.
If an animal left our consulting room and it was still ill, so after primary consultations for a clinically ill animal, that would be 100% of the cases. We had a professional obligation to see that animal again within at least 12 to 72 hours, the average being 48 hours, because all Although the diagnosis mightn't change in 48 hours, the prognosis certainly would. And as we said earlier, the most important thing to the client is managing the prognosis.
So when it leaves the consultation room for that first consultation, the prognosis is, we've given it some treatment. We accept some improvement. We should see things happening within 12 to 72 hours.
I'd like to see you again in 48 hours so we can reassess that, because we may need To change the treatment, we may need to change the medication. We may need to add to that, but I want to give you an update on the prognosis. And that was our, our, allowance to have the client back who were going to give them something they valued and wanted.
So just to reiterate that, we had a professional obligation to see that a sick animal again within 12 to 72 hours. Acutely ill, certainly 12 hours, less acute, up to 72 hours. So here's our practise running at 81%.
Now, if we took that to heart, the actual percentage we should be working at, the optimum would be at least 100%. So if we just started to look at some of those cases that we tended to say, we'll bring it back in a week, or let me know if it's no better, instead of, instead saying, well, actually, This analyst still, I'd like to see you in 48 hours for those reasons, we could be running at 100%, perhaps 120, because some of those will need to be seen 2 or 3 times at least. So there's potential for a higher re-examination rate on that basis.
And of course, this is just practising good stands of medicine. If we do the maths on that, going from 81% to 102%, and this is 25, 50% increase up to 122%, which isn't huge margins, that's an increase of 20 consultations, per 100 or up to 40 consultations that can add up to quite a bit of money. So it can be 12,000 pounds to say for purely, consultation fee, for.
For that, or up to 40,000 pounds for the whole practise. Of course, if we do push that up higher, and we have practises currently working at around about 150 to 175% repeat rates by practising ongoing proactive medicine. And there's a potential loss of income of up to 8000 to 100,000 pounds just in that process.
This is the 55% of work that we're not getting, on a regular basis. And really, that really maps out to something like 2 extra consults per vet per day. Now, obviously, if you have full capacity and you have no space in your surgery, that's gonna be very hard to contend with.
But we are trying to grow your business. So maybe you need to shift consultations, maybe some of that work needs to go to nurses, or maybe you need more vets. I don't know, but this is just really looking at the, the, the standards of care with that.
And that's why I come back to that perhaps some practises don't need more clients. In fact, many practises need less. Here's another example.
Here's another practise working at a COS 1 to CO2 ratio. Their ratio is averaging around about 67%, for, for this practise over a number of months. And again, we have the potential here, probably raising that up probably close to 80 to 100, with that.
Now, interesting thing to do is look at that ratio on a per vet basis. Actually gives you a very interesting insight. Into the standards of care that your vets are practising individually.
Now, taking out part-timers who don't always have the ability to see in 48 hours, but often that can be done. This is why protocols become important. The animal can be seen by, even if not by the same vet.
So, in some practises, what we have here is a vet practising at 80% repeat rate. And in the next consulting room, there's a, a vet practising at 30%. 0% repeat rate.
Now, you've got to ask yourself, are these people seeing drastically different cases? I suggest not. It's in the way they manage cases that are important.
So perhaps a conversation with vet too about what he actually says to client to get, to get them back at 80%, to the vet at for working at 30% might be a very useful conversation. But in this practise, overall, there's room to improve that repeat rate. So, Listen out for or hear things that have been said in your own consulting room.
Here's your treatment, bringing back if he's no better. If Brian isn't better in 5 days, call me. Let me know how Priscilla's doing and she finished.
These are all abdications of our case care that we should be looking after. This is what our clients want is us to take the care and compassion to let them know. And like I said, the thing that they want is, OK, the diagnosis won't change in 2 or 3 days, but the prognosis certainly will.
So it's those sort of things we need to address specifically. So this practise could certainly be looking at higher rates quite easily, within that start practising some of these rules. If it does, they'll be practising better medicine, they'll have happier clients, they'll be, they'll, they'll be happier, healthier patients for sure.
But the other thing that's gonna happen is that we're going to A lot more income with no more work, with no more clients, with no more caseload, and no more staff or resources. They're just going to be doing the work that's presented to them and doing it in a better way. And that can add up to quite a bit of money, over a 12-month period.
And it's not that much extra work built into the working day. Now, here's the trick. We talked about pricing earlier, and what we're looking here for a real practise development thing, if we actually look at pricing, number one, moving our prices up to that minimum price we should be charging, and also increasing our repeat rates, we get a double exponential going on.
And this can add up over practises to quite a bit of extra income generated. And again, there hasn't been one more client walk through the door. There hasn't been one more patient presented.
And of course, the caseload hasn't changed at all. We're just managing cases a lot, lot better. In many cases, when we work this through, often we find, there's at least 50,000 to 75,000 pounds per vet per year, capable of being generated just by practising better medicine, by having satisfied clients with the work we do.
There's, there's no question that the work we do is below standard. It's just that we don't manage the case load particularly well. And I think we can all see that in our own working styles.
Just as an example, this was, this was a practise we did some, what we call our invoice workshop where we went through these, factors specifically for the practise. We looked at the individual caseload of the best. We looked at their individual repeat rates.
We adjusted their basic pricing structures to address all these things. And it's quite surprising that you can get results extremely quickly. Now, these are 4 weeks.
These are the 2 weeks prior to our what we call invoice workshop of the discussion with the vets. There was an immediate price adjustment. There was an immediate, attempt by the vets to increase the repeat rate.
And what we got was an average transaction value or increase of about 5 pounds per transaction immediately within the same week. What that added up to was within the same week after invoice Workshop, that generated an extra 6000 pounds per week into this practise, throughout. Added consultations, slightly higher rate, and increased client care, patient care, etc.
Now, we'll admit that's reasonably exceptional, but it is possible. It did happen and we have the figures to show that. So it's worth just thinking this through, but this is about talking to your vets, getting them on board.
This can't be imposed. This is an agreed process, and understood process. So just to reiterate on that, the 48 hour rule, I think, is hugely important.
It's not about the money, it's about your standard of care. It's how you look after patients. It's actually what the clients want from you.
It's why they're willing to bring their clients, their, their patients to us. And remember, we are talking about your best clients here, which is why we've got to be working with our best, client, Bonded clients that go through this. So, let's look at that follow-up consultation.
What do we do with it? We've had the animal in. We saw it on Monday, and perhaps had vomiting and diarrhoea.
Perhaps it was quite ill, a bit dehydrated. We, we've, given it some medication, we've given it some electrolytes. It's had no food for 48 hours.
We've had it back on the Wednesday, 48 hours later. We've re-examined it, And we, what we should be doing there is a full clinical examination. It's not just the vomiting, diarrhoea.
There's 13 body systems we need to check out. We need to ask lots of open questions. How's the animal been since you were last here?
How have you coped with the animal being ill? Have you noticed any other symptoms? Are there any other animals been affected?
Tell me more about it. These are the open questioning techniques involving the client in the process, reviewing the case. We Reassess.
Yes, we still think it's an idiopathic vomiting and diarrhoea. We can't find any specific problem with there. But what we do know that these cases often resolved fairly quickly.
If we're worried about infection, we perhaps would have taken swabs because we're worried about part of a virus. We might have done other things with that as well. But we're constantly reassessing that in the light of new knowledge.
Don't forget, it's also had some treatment that's going to affect the outcome within 48 hours as well. Of course, we reassess the treatment plan and the medication. Is this, it's still on the right thing?
Does it start on some, low volume food? Does it start on different electrolytes? Does it start taking some oral medication?
What changes from here? So this is the stuff we will involve the plant and show them the next step in the process. Not the whole thing, just the next couple of steps.
And of course, what we do then is sell them, resell them the prognosis. So what we expect from here is a gradual reintroduction of food, getting back to normal. By Friday, we'd expect the dog to be happier, the dehydration sorted out.
We have to get nutrition, we need, we need to have continuing rest. What you can do as an owner are these three things. Let me give you a printout of the treatment plan of what we expect you to do.
Of course, now there's a lot of tangibility for the client. That's what the Client is willing to pay for that prognosis. Is this going to get better and how is it going to affect my life, on that?
OK. And of course, it's still ill at this point. You now have the obligation to see it back in 48 hours because it's still under your care.
Now, here's the big question. What happens on Friday? You open the door, the dog comes bounding across the waiting room, jumps on the table, gives you a big lick, and the client walks through the door and says, Oh, he's so much better.
And all perhaps in your mind, it flashes the thought, Oh my God, he's so much better now, what do I do? The problem is, the clients walked in the door and also giving you the thing that you value most, the diagnosis, he's so much better. But of course, if we follow these 6 steps, we still do a full.
Yes, well, he does seem so much better. Let's just check him over and make sure. That is better, and there's nothing else going on here.
The full clinical examination. We review the case. Well, what we saw on Monday was this.
What we saw on Wednesday was this. What's happened since then? Tell me what improvements he's had.
Has there been any sickness at all? More open questions. The treatment is nearly done.
We don't need to do more. We want to check his food. But of course, the prognosis is This breed of dog, it seems fairly common.
He's had this before. Perhaps it's gonna happen again. Here's the three symptoms you want to be looking out for.
Here's 3 things you can do to prevent it in the future. Here's a diet I'd recommend that perhaps could help prevent it for, for the, Future, etc. And what you've given them is a full consultation, a full prognosis, even though the animal is clinically better, the client has received a huge amount of value in that, and I would suggest they would be willing to pay for that quite happily.
So, the 48 hour rule will work if we give the client what they want in amongst us. And again, we're talking about your best clients here, the clients you actually want to be practising medicine with. OK?
So, In my practise, and perhaps a little bit facetiously, we always maintained every animal had a next visit booked. There was no animal that left the building that didn't have another opportunity to come and see us. If it was clinically ill, well, of course, the acute animal we saw in 12 to 72 hours.
To put it slightly bluntly, before it got better. In fact, a week later it would be. If it was a chronic case, a skin case, something that had been going on for some time, we slowly got it better and we got to a resolution.
Well, chronic cases have a tendency to reoccur, so we need to see it again before it gets worse again. So that might be 2 months, 3 months' time, but there's certainly going to be a situation where we should be seeing those animals again, to check the condition to make sure it's not going to get worse, etc. If none of those, at least it should be having a vaccination, a worming, a flea control.
There's something in its preventative healthcare profile that probably needs to be flagged up and probably needs to remind us, see his vaccinations are due in November. Let's book him in for that now, OK? And start booking that ahead.
And to be honest, and again a bit facetious, they've all got teeth, they probably all need a dental so should be booking in for that at least. So, like I said, in, in our book, in our practise, there was always a reason to see these clients again and a very good reason for that. Now, I won't go through this, but there's a seven step protocol, this is .
In available on the slides when you can see it, but it is basically client education. Make sure there's ask the client involved them what's convenient, offer choices, take the client to reception and recommend that they have an appointment there, talk to the reception about involvement. The rest of the team with it.
Book the date and time, give them a written appointment card for it. Make sure there's a reminder built into it, so if it's more than the 48 hours, and that might be a written reminder. It might be an SMS text.
It might be an email. Make sure you've captured that information so you can use it efficiently. .
Just to see what it doesn't suit the client, what's best for them. And of course, it doesn't hurt to do a reminder phone call. My dentist phones me every time I'm due for an appointment 24 hours beforehand, because with the best will in the world, people forget, people have busy lives.
The clients do appreciate that. So there's a process that the whole team can get involved with it, to add value, to add value, but of course, we're improving patient care the whole time, improving our standards of care. So I hope that was, useful.
I'm sure there might be a few questions on that. What I'd like to move on to is this consistency of protocols and how do we develop that. I just sort of want to give a couple of quick examples of how perhaps you can develop basic protocols with your vets, and then move on to some more of the complicated ones.
Clinical medicine is not, mandatory. There's no set. Way of doing it, but there is a better way of treatment in most cases.
There's an accepted standard we should be working towards, which is why you go to CPD, which is why you go to these courses. When you go on that, you said, Well, on this course, I learned a better way of dealing with the coughing dog. Here's the recommended protocol we should be thinking about.
So how do we sit down with our vets and develop those protocols? How do we have, have that so we get agreement within that? So let's have a look.
Here's an invoice. The dog has been seen. It's had a consultation, and it's had some kind eardrops.
So let's assume in this case, the dog obviously had something like otitis extern. The conversation might have went, Yes, the ears are a bit mucky. Put these couple of drops in the ears twice a day.
Bring him back if he's no better, or let's pop him back in a week and see what's happening. Now, That may be the case. But, of course, if a dog's presented with a mucky ear, there's probably a range of other diagnostic, processes we can go through that would give us a different one, diagnosis one, but certainly a different prognosis if any of those came up possible.
So, here's what, as I, I would pose it to people, he's now sitting back in your exam room back at university, the, the question number one is, you'll present a dog with a mucky ear, waxy, and paraent ear. What do you do? Now, if the exam answer you wrote down is, I'd check it over and bung it a bit of canno and see, bring it back in a week, you probably wouldn't score really high marks for that in the exam.
You probably wouldn't score really high financial marks in your own practise for that either. OK. And I would suggest probably your standards of care.
OK, it may get better, it may not. But let's just explore, perhaps what are the options available with that dog at presentations. What are some of the things we should consider?
Well, perhaps cytology is one of those things. Cytology is a hugely useful exercise to do, because it reveals bacteria that you can pick up on the swab. It reveals mites that you can pick up on the swab.
It reveals yeast, you can pick up swabs. And every one of those specific diagnoses. Changes the prognosis quite dramatically, particularly if you're picking up proteoceudomonas type things, in the ear.
Now, if you take a cytology swab, which can be done quite quickly. Now, we'll admit in a 10-minute consultation, you're gonna be really stretched. If you haven't got nurse assistants in the consulting room, you're gonna be really stretched.
So a lot of this comes back to the reasons we practise. Subsidised standards of care is because you don't have the resources available to practise good medicine in the consulting room. So sometimes we have to rethink how we're consulting, how we're operating, how we're dealing with these things.
And I said, if you've got clients lining up out the door, you've probably got too many clients to practise good medicine. Often you've got too many clients to make money, which is the most bizarre thing. OK, back to our cytology.
Quick and easy, you need a slide, you need a swab, you need a bit of diff quick or whatever you use these days, and that can be done. And you can actually have that slide back in the consulting room in about 7 to 8 minutes. And you can have the client looking down the microscope saying, see that?
That's what we're dealing with. Now, what we have to do from here is this, and it might be send it off bacteriology. Now you might say, Some people might say, well, something that you could actually have the dog and then clean the air under sedation, GA and of course the question is when do you do that?
And all these things actually have a timeliness. Now, back to the cytology. The cytology is no point doing that after a week of Canora or any ear drops, because it would ruin that process.
So there is a, a time to do this and a time not to do this. Now, when do you actually have an animal in sedate it? Well, you might have all sorts of criteria for that.
In our practise, what we said, if we cannot visualise tympanic membrane, we do not stick anything. Do that dog's ear. We admit it, we sedate it, GA, and we clean out the ear.
When we can visualise tympanic membrane, then we can move forward because that changes the prognosis, it changes the, the treatment plan, if that's the case. Now, a range of things within that, admittedly, it might still go home with canoral, but of course, it would come back in 48 hours. We would reassess the pain, we'd reassess the cleanliness, we'd reassess the, the diagnosis.
We made And we may continue the treatment or we may change it. But if that was your exam answer, I would suggest you'd get far, far better marks, than what we do. So the question I often ask is, what happens when we, between the exam, we sit at the university and ending up in the consulting room, what happens to all that good medicine that we should be practising in that?
Again, so that's would be the discussion you could have with your vets. What are the options, what should we be doing if we're practising the good best medicine? Again, a simple.
Invoice presented. Here's a dog with fusiphalmic. OK, an antibiotic eye ointment.
What's that mean? Well, quite likely, the dog's had some sort of conjunctivitis, etc. OK?
And again, it might be a reasonable thing to do. Looked at the eye, didn't look too bad. I'd sit at home fusialing, it should be better in a week.
Now, the question here is, What else could we or should we be doing with that? There's a range of things again. So here's our second exam question, on the paper.
Do presented with a mucky eye, what do you do? OK? The answer, check it over, bit of eye opening, bring it back if it's no better, is again, probably a suboptimal answer here.
So, obviously, options are Shermatier test. How long does that take? Not very long, 2 minutes perhaps.
If it comes up. Negative, as in there's no tear production, does that change the diagnosis? It certainly does.
Does it change the prognosis? Hugely, there's huge value in doing that. Of course there's no point in doing a Shema tear test after a week of fusiphalmic.
. Ophane may be an option if it's got plethora if it if the dog can't see in the eye, particularly fluorocene is a hugely bad tooth, very cheap, very easy, very quick, OK, but it does pick up those subclinical things, huge man, even these the, the, the to. You can do these days with the, new, toometry, equipment is, is, is wonderful. So, and I'm not suggesting you do or don't do this.
You're the veterinary surgeon. What I'm suggesting is, is there other things you could and should be doing as routine, that would improve your diagnostic skills? And again it's comes down to time, effort, energy.
And again, if you just work through things. In this way of saying, what are the options, what should or could we be doing? Is there a price to this?
How do we charge for that? Are we practising the best medicine we can, are we getting, the best results we can, well, probably you're then building up particularly good protocols from that. .
Again, just a point to be made. If you do a fluorocene or a Shermat test, a lot of practises I see charge 2 or 3 pounds to cover the cost of the drops or the, or the strip. But of course, what you've got to ask yourself, what is the value of that test?
Not to us, because, well, it is important to us because it changes the diagnosis. But what's the prognostic value and therefore, perhaps the financial value of that? Test to the client.
If we can actually say, no, there is no subclinical eye ulceration here. Yes, it has perfectly good tier production. That's really good news.
Well, perhaps it might be worth more than 2 pounds 79 to the client. Perhaps there is more value in what we do. And this is a key thing.
I think we really undervalue what we do as vets, because we find it remarkably easy, most of this stuff. What we don't realise is that your clients can't do it. We have to do it.
But if we can add value to it, we can actually add financial value to it as well. So just a thought on that. So, and again, it comes back to that full clinical examination, the repeat examination.
This dog's had Corral. It's now, it's also on Fusiphalmic. It's also chewing its feet.
It's also 2 years old. What are we thinking about here? What may have we missed in the process?
And of course, a vast number of these skin cases are endocrine-based, as well, or allergic-based. Maybe there's further workup in those things we should be looking at. And this is the importance of the repeat consultation as well.
So again, just a holistic approach to making sure we've got the time, we've got the skill, we're not rushed into these things, to, to manage cases particularly well. The clients will be getting better value, the patients will be getting better. So suggestion here would be, go back to your vets.
Your next vet's meeting, do not talk about the autoplayer, do not talk about the rota, do not talk about holidays. Sit down with that. With at least 1 or 2 basic protocols, warn your vets beforehand.
We're gonna talk about how we treat ears, we're gonna talk about how we deal with eyes. We're gonna talk about how we deal with mucky teeth. What's the best protocol we can come up with, and cover all your, your basic things.
And then when you've done that, start to build on to the more involved things. What can we do with the coughing dog? What do we do with the chronically lame dog?
What do we do with the cardiac cases, thyroids, etc. And then you can build up a series of consistent protocols. It helps locums when they come in.
It helps new, new graduates when they come in. It helps new, new employees when they come in, that you have a standardised approach based on the best and latest medicine available to you. OK?
Really good use of your veterinary meetings, in clinical meetings for that sort of stuff. So, Just to sum up on that, stuff we've covered, and this is all just adding value to the consultation, making sure the consultation is worth doing and worth charging for, of course. That willing to charge a fair price for your professional time.
Remember your professional fee you're charging is got to cover all your fixed costs and make a profit. You charge you charge for your drugs covers your drug costs. You've got to aim to be respected for your veterinary medicine, your clients are there looking for your authority, looking for your professionalism, .
They're not there to, to judge you and be liked or disliked. And most, most of our actions are based on not upsetting the client, not doing the best by the client because they haven't got enough money. Those issues we looked at earlier.
Just practise the best medicine you can, be a patient advocate, and recommend with involvement from the client, the best treatments you can do in your practise. You will get price queries. There were people, particularly in the current environment, economics, that clients will have less money.
You'll need some other options, but you'll need to explain why those other options are not your preferred options. Yes, we can do less and charge less, but this might be the consequence of it. Be prepared to negotiate on those.
If people haven't got the money, that's unfortunate. It's surprising people can find the money if they need it. Again, the quality of your client changes that dynamic dramatically.
It is difficult for some people, but they, you can negotiate with people to get the best result for the animal. I've said communication skills, communication skills, asking open questions involving the client, understanding the illness in terms of the client's perception as differential from the disease and pathology that we're looking at. OK.
Look at it from the client's perspective as well and involve that. The only way you can do that is asking what they think, asking how they feel, how's it affecting them in those sort of ways. And of course, what the clients value most in the, in the consultative process is the prognosis.
What's it mean to them and where can they go? What's important to us as vets is the diagnosis. Of course, we need to do that.
But don't let the communication, the conversations stop at the diagnosis, move on to the prognosis and be willing. To have the animal back to review that. And of course, the 48 hour rule is probably the lesson for tonight.
Don't assume clients can diagnose and prognose. Get them back to you, to examine, to re-examine, to retreat, and then re-prognose for them. That's what you're there to do.
That's the professional approach to looking after your patients. OK, now, we've gotten doing pretty well with that. There is more to this, and what I want, what I haven't covered here is what I call, actually, this is a term from John Sheridan, actually, in fact, the missed and failed opportunities for professional services.
It's those things we do whereby we don't charge properly for our professional time, particularly in things like diagnostics, particularly in hospitalisation, our surgical fees, and anaesthetic fees. Now I think there's a, another, Webinar in it and places where we can just fill in then and and do that so I would hope we can do some more work with that Anthony, I think 28th of October we've got that lined up for wasn't it? OK, well, that'd be fine.
I'll call that part two, and, I think we can follow the theme forward from there. Just if you're interested, what I've just, set up, which might be a little bit of fun, is I've set up a couple of polls from what you've been talking about today. Would you like to see what people are thinking about what you've been talking about?
I would actually, it'd be very interesting. OK, so let's see if this works, if it doesn't be patient with me, everyone, but I'm gonna try and launch this and see what happens. So do you agree with Alan's rationale of treatment, just this whole idea of getting people back more, do you feel comfortable with that?
Is that something that you agree with or do you disagree with this? So if we can . Give a bit more time to vote.
And then we'll get the the reply to that. I've got about . Two other questions if we fancy going with those.
That's 2 seconds, if anybody hasn't voted, let's, let's go for that and see what, what we get. OK, and how do I just close that? Close, OK, let's close it.
And 94% voted. 100% agree. Alan, you can't get better than that.
Well thank you very much. Can we have another one, can we have another one? Are you into having another one, Alan?
Yeah, certainly, we're obviously into an enlightened crowd here, so let's make the most of it. OK, so let's launch the next one. What do you think about the C2, C1 ratio?
Does anybody know what theirs is, if you want to type that up in the question box? I've cheated. Because I knew what Alan was talking about and it's quite interesting seeing how mine has changed from last month when I wasn't around as much to this month when I was around, so .
That's interesting. It often comes down to one or two that's making a huge difference. So what do you think about the C2C1 ratio?
They, they like that 100% useful. Maybe these questions I'm asking aren't contentious enough, but there you go, that's a good one. And then, 0, 96% said useful and 4% said not useful.
I was still looking at the old survey. So it's still a resounding useful, but it's OK, you know, it's good to have difference of opinion. .
And they will launch the last one if we may. Can people see that? Do you have written protocols for most procedures in your practise?
So, you know. Obviously, you know, if it's 2 or 3 protocols, then that's maybe not the case, but if you've got a good percentage of them. Well, if not written at least discussed and agreed.
Yes, well, I, I, I did EIth a few years ago and their definition of a protocol was, if it's not written down, it's not a protocol. Well, exactly right, we are talking veterinary here. OK, so let's close that and see what we get results wise.
. 19% yes, 81% no. OK, so that that's really interesting. Hope that's been useful for you, Alan.
OK. And can I just move, move on to, another, if, if this is of interest to people, and I have finished the webinar and thank you for, for listening and thanks for those that survey, that really makes it, quite, quite interesting to see how people are responding to that. If this stuff is of interest to people, I'd like to just, quickly mention my platinum weekends that have come out, these free, finance and marketing weekends that we're, we're looking at.
Can I just run through a little bit of information on that? Yeah, sure. Just very quickly, what, you know, what we can do after this is ask questions, so if people are happy to stick around, obviously, you know, we will do some questions.
But that's great, that'd be super. OK, just, just I can just have 5 minutes on that would be useful, because if people like this stuff and they feel it's useful, perhaps these, these seminars are going to be, quite useful for them. It's what I'm calling my platinum practise.
Like I said, my, my challenge in life these days is improving the business model, changing it fundamentally to suit the 21st century. The way work has done with changing economy, the rate of change we're in, I just don't think works anymore and I just want to help practises, understand some new, ways to work it forward, some, some of the metrics and looking at, some of those marketing and financial models that are simple to implement and simple to get results. And like I said, my, my mantra really is if, if I can't find 50 to 100,000 pounds per bet per year in the majority of practises, I'm not really trying hard enough.
So if I can just run through these seminars and just give people the opportunity to, see if they're, they're interested, I'd appreciate that. Basically, I'm Looking to work with practise owners in particular, particularly those practise owners who feel, that they're working far too hard, for far too little and perhaps far too long, that want to break out of that sort of busy cycle a little bit and just make work in practise a little bit easier, a little bit more profitable, and certainly a little bit more enjoyable. The key to that for me is getting more valuable clients, not more clients, but more valuable clients.
Improve your marketing, Move the way you present yourself to the, the market, and particularly, speaking, we, we just did a whole day today on what's called persona, looking at the actual demographics and psychographics of the clients, that come into your practise. What's the message they want here? Like in the consulting room, what they want the prognosis, not the diagnosis.
That's very simplistic. There's more to it than that. But these little steps can double or triple your profits very, very simply.
So that's really what I'm trying to look forward to. What we've found over the weekends, we've run, 5 of these so far last year and this year. They're a 2-day weekend on a Friday and Saturday.
There's one in, October 1 in November coming up. But this is the feedback we've had, that breaking out of this busy trap. Now, what I think that's saying they're really busy, but does that mean they're profitable?
And it's very easy to be busy fools in this business, working harder and harder, but getting no further ahead. Generating more profit and just sharing some of that frustration of, because every practise owner is a vet and the business owner. That's two full-time jobs.
It's just a really, and Anthony, you know yourself how difficult that is to manage, and have a family and have a life and things around that. And what we found really very important is the supportiveness of the group, even with the weekend when there's competing practise, etc. Because I think we all recognise it's a pretty lonely job out there running a busy veterinary practise.
And sometimes it's worth just stepping off the hamster wheel and having a look around, with a few other people. Inspiration, new ideas, certainly plenty of new ideas, but also giving you some level of, implementation for that. So the guidance and support, the tools.
The resources to actually look at that new changing economy will give you lots of information about what the economy is holding for you, what's going to happen. As you know, I've had an article in, in that Times regards to the economy. I made some fairly bold predictions, and I probably stand by those, but it's not the predictions, but what we do about it's the most important.
And so it's a real opportunity for some practises to do really well here. Marketing, what's it meant to do? We're not great marketers.
We don't present ourselves well. It is probably the leverage that is gonna make a difference for the next 4 or 5 years at least, and really gonna make a difference to practises. And like I said, the whole point of that is not more clients, but better quality clients, and there's certain ways of new ways of looking to get to that, differentiation.
On the financial side, I've said, there's the money to be made, it's sitting there ready to have, if you want it, it's there to be, we've done the work, we've earned the money, we just haven't collected it, we haven't. Put it in our bank because of the debt control or we just haven't put it in the, the till because we didn't ask for it. And we can give you some of these models in much more depth.
We're talking about. I said, your profits the important thing for you. There's certainly, that's the easy bit of the equation as far as I'm concerned.
So that's kind of what we've found from this, and, that's what we're hoping. To deliver in a fairly short time over the two days. For some people, it's just that ability to step back from the practise.
There's a saying that I like it's the hamster wheels still turning, but we, but we think the hamster's dead, and that's kind of where we see some practise owners going along with that. I can agree with that. OK.
Just to give people a quick breakdown of what the, the two days will hold, I it's a Friday and Saturday, so it doesn't take all your week, it doesn't take all your weekend. Day one's about clients and client quality. We've got the client-patient trends, client compliance, psychology, demographics, psychographics.
We're gonna talk about how branding and image can dramatically change your, your visibility and your competitiveness, the internal process of good literature and promotion and websites with that. Let's say, we've just done 2 days on, on very in-depth and quite advanced web strategy, With the current group and that's just been a fantastic couple of days, obviously, the customer service interface with clients, how, and it's not receptionists aren't the problems reception processes we need to look at. We've got lots of tools to work with that.
The bit where I get fairly animated now is starting to look at some of this profit and performance of your vets and the practise. And of course, those two things get better clients, better medicine means better profit. So it's, it's profit is an outcome of this process, but we need the metrics to measure it.
We'll show you some pretty nifty tools, cost control and performance management tools that you can actually see exactly where you are on a month by month, quarter by quarter basis in actual terms of profitability. Most people have very poor management accounts that do that. Debt and stock control, strategic pricing strategies as we've mentioned, this consistency of charging, we've got these, these missed opportunities.
So we're gonna go into all that stuff in in more detail. So a very full agenda, lots of really good stuff in there to to take it forward. So, so 2 days, Alan, but this is a free seminar, you're not, that's worth the loss, isn't it, 2 days.
Well, like I said, I, I'm, I'm paid quite a bit of money to do my seage for Improve and Pfizer and Fort Dodge, etc. So these are going to be of high quality, very professional. Obviously, it's gonna be, there's notes to go with it, so you're going to get with it.
I'll give you my view on the latest financial, economic, and Fort Dodge data that's available to the industry, because that's, that's my job in a, in a big way. I'm gonna have other speakers there, we're gonna talk about branding and literature, websites and online because that's not my forte, but I truly believe that it's probably where the future lies. And, without the tools you're gonna be left behind on that one.
And these, if, these preventive healthcare strategies, which I really think is the, the basic setup for, for improved client care, improved client basis, is that. Now, we'll say these seminars, they are free, but they are limited to 25 packs. We cannot cope with any more than that.
So you can invite a second person, but we have maximum 25 people, in fact, is what we're looking for. And those seminars are filling up quite quickly. .
And like I said, there's no doubt there's gonna be a lots of really good stuff out of it, you, we'll have people who walked away just brimming with ideas and we have a. Sort of remedial help for people who can't cope with the number of ideas they're getting. I would suggest, if they were paying for this, they'd be looking for at least 750 pounds for the weekend, with everything that's going into it.
But just to, let you know, the second thing, it's held at Alexandra House. It's, where, improved CPD, based. It's a beautiful hotel.
The food is excellent. The, the accommodation's superb, swimming pools, and saunas, there's plenty of other so if people want to bring. Partners and children that they're quite welcome as well.
They're not invited to seminar, but they can come along to the rest. If you wanna check out Alexandra House on the web and have a look at it, it's really quite a lovely place and a great place to learn. So what am I offering here?
The seminars are free. I'm giving my time free for this, because I really believe it's something that can help practises with that. What I would ask is, if you'd pay for your own accommodation and food, so we're doing a special deal with Alexandra House, full bed and breakfast, full lunches, the room hire, full lunches.
To go with that for the 2 days. So you get your accommodation, lunch, a sit-down dinner with the whole 25 of us, breakfast, refreshments, and all the leisure facilities included with that. If you're bringing partners, ring us for a, for the special price.
It's not that much more, but we, we would need to charge, a different price for, for people doubling up. So how would people book this, Alan? How is the best way of going about it?
OK, well, like I said, we've, we've organised 3 seminars, one is in 2 weeks' time, but that's actually done. So if people are interested with one at the end of October and one at the end of November, on the Friday and Saturday. So I would suggest people for that.
Are interested to get in touch quite quickly. Best way to get in touch is either go to the website platinumpractice.co.uk.
You can actually, fill in a little form there and submit it to us and we will be in touch with you. Bring the office directly, my, my PA at work, Rachel, she's, she's hugely pregnant with twins at the moment, so she struggles to get the phone sometimes. She's off having checkups and things, but leave a message and get back to you.
My mobile number's there, more than happy to take your call, or email us directly. So anyway, just registering your interest, more than happy to talk it through with you. Alan, we've got, we've got a Wayne, is it Wayne Williams?
On the webinar, and he's just left a little message here, on the questions. Unfortunately, the other thing I would encourage people to do is think about getting the The microphones and the speakers because then we can have a bit more interaction if people want to ask the question, but . Wayne has said, can you tell the group that I'm in a practise manager and went on one of these weekends last year.
Extremely enjoyed this and I've implemented a lot of the information learned in the practise, and it works. So there you go. Excellent.
Hi Dwayne. Yeah, I remember we had, that was actually a particularly good seminar. There's a good crowd there and, plenty of great ideas came out of that one.
So and I'm glad you've implemented some stuff, because, it's very easy to get lots of ideas going home and doing something about it. It's the real trick. So well done, you.
Great, so, . Yeah, as you say, I mean, I, I would think I look at these improved courses and 2 days, you know, CPD 50 to 600 pounds seems to be the kind of Mark, I'm seeing, so something for 150 is. You know, is excellent value.
So can I, can I have one of the places, Alan, can I book in? Am I allowed to come? You certainly are, actually more than glad to have you there.
OK, good, well, we'll sort that one out, so that's one down. . Obviously, it's up to yourself if you find that, if you feel that that's useful, get in touch with Alan, there's all the details.
I'll leave them on the screen. Have we got any questions? Does anybody have any, anything that they want to, to ask Alan about?
We had a few comments, . A couple of people saying, oh, we had one person I'm not sure because I can't see the name here, but their ratio C2 to C1 was 88%. So they're at least measuring it and that's a good one.
And another person said, I know my ratio is too low. And actually it was, it was interesting. We just had a look at this.
I think I just said then, didn't I, but . As this month where we've been quite. Busy.
I've been back. I was away in August for quite a bit, has gone, has gone from 40% in August to 75% in, in September. That's fantastic.
It'd be to know what that means financially. No, I don't want to know it's frightening. No, you're right, I know.
But yeah, I mean, I think it's, I I've obviously, you know, heard you speaking, but it's, it's then about implementing it and looking at those ratios and continuing to look at them, isn't it? Certainly is, it's constant measuring and monitoring and you need, that's a process and it's a procedure you need to put in place that happens, not because you go and do it, but because there's some process to make it happen on a regular basis, either internally or externally. So, Have we got any more questions?
Let me see if anything's coming up. I think that that's left people with lots of food for thought, Alan. I thank you very much.
A brilliant presentation, obviously, you know, I was aware of that C2 to C one thing, but again, just to focus the mind and say let's have a look at it again, . Just really useful, as I said last week when Martha Cannon was on. You know, when you go to a CPD meeting, if you can learn one or two things, and then take them back into the practise and, and change the way you look at things.
So last week it was, there was so much good stuff coming out about diabetes. But similarly this week with the practise management, you know, just encourage everyone to go away and let us know how you're getting on and obviously any, Feedback from the webinar, you can always leave that at Anthony at the webinar bets.com, which I would obviously pass on to Alan as well.
So I think we've we've . We seem to have answered everybody there and nobody seems to be coming up with any more questions, so, Alan, thanks again and looking forward to the participants. Looking forward to the 2 28th for the next for the next instalment.
Excellent, hope to see everyone there. That's great, thanks, Alan, bye bye. Thanks, good night.