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IMPROMED QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER Spring 2017

TABLE OF CONTENTS Featured Articles ..................... 1 Five Ways Technology Can Help Improve the Client Experience Why Wellness Plans? .................. 4 Marketing Your Practice ........... 6 Top Five Client Retention Mistakes (and How to Fix Them) News to Note ............................. 9 New Names for Your ImproMed Software Training Corner ...................... 10 How Hardy is Your Hard Drive? Tech Support ........................... 11 Inventory Management: Make Sure the Price is Right

FIVE WAYS TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP IMPROVE THE CLIENT EXPERIENCE Our industry has been talking at length about the importance of the client experience. For service-oriented businesses (and veterinary medicine is one of them), the experience that customers have can lead to repeat visits and improved customer loyalty. Yet, when was the last time you stopped to think about the experience you offer your clients? Have you recently looked at your practice through their eyes? Veterinary practices are busy places, so it’s understandable if the answer is no. Many practitioners feel like it’s all they can do to treat the number of patients who walk through the door each day – and that’s how they really prefer to spend their time anyway, rather than worrying about the business aspect of running a practice. Did you know that your software can help you improve the experience of your clients, without draining your time and energy? Here are five simple ways to use technology to boost client experience.

REACH CLIENTS IN THE MANNER THAT THEY WANT TO BE REACHED Client experience doesn’t start when clients walk through your doors. It starts with your reminder cards, practice marketing, and any other touch points that encourage clients to make an appointment. Are you sending the same type of communication to everyone, or are you reaching your clients in the manner in which they want to be reached? Some clients will always prefer a postcard in the mail or a personal phone call from the clinic, but what about those who prefer email or text reminders? Automated services like Rapport from Henry Schein works with your ImproMed software and allows you to send email and text reminders to those who prefer these methods, with easy appointment confirmation methods. Clients simply click the link to request or confirm appointments. Rapport’s online scheduling feature takes this one step further by allowing clients to schedule appointments online, directly from their computer or mobile device. The appointment automatically appears in the EasyTime calendar, and an automatic confirmation is sent via email or text. Little conveniences like these go a long way in boosting compliance along with client experience.

GREET CLIENTS AND PATIENTS BY NAME “Hi, Ms. Jones. How are you and Fluffy today?” This kind of personalized greeting communicates that your clients and patients are valuable to your practice and creates a welcoming feeling that starts the appointment off on the right foot. No matter how many clients you have, it’s impossible to recognize each client and patient as they walk through the door. That’s where your ImproMed software comes in. Storing client and patient files electronically – with pictures – makes this possible. A quick click in the appointment calendar allows staff members to see who’s coming in next and prepare to greet them by name. You don’t have photos stored in the client record or the patient medical record? Start an initiative to gather them. Some practices keep a tablet or mobile phone at the front desk that allows them to quickly snap a photo and upload it to the patient record.

KEEP TRACK OF EVERYTHING GOING ON Your doctor and staff time is valuable ... but so is the time of your clients. No one likes to wait more than a few minutes in an empty exam room for the next doctor or staff member to come in, and no one wants to call in to check on the status of a pet after a procedure, only to be put on hold while a staff member hunts down the current location of the patient. ImproMed’s Whiteboard and Clinic Census features can help. Clinic Census tracks the current status and condition of every patient in the clinic at any given time, from any monitor or workstation. This helps track the amount of time that clients spend in exam rooms, minimizing client downtime, and it also prevents staff members from being caught off guard when fielding those how-is-Fluffy-doing phone calls. They simply pull up the Whiteboard and provide the status update, giving the client a quick answer and peace of mind.

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Want to take your client experience to the next level? Incorporate text messaging, right from your ImproMed software, with Rapport. This allows you to send a quick text message to individual clients letting them know that Fluffy is out of surgery, doing just fine, and ready to be picked up at 4 p.m.

AVOID THE CHECKOUT SPIRAL Your clients receive attractive reminders with convenient ways to schedule and confirm appointments. They’re greeted by name in a friendly way, and they’ve had a great experience during the appointment. The last thing you want to do is send them back to the front desk, where they may have to wait in line, or worse yet, get sticker shock when they receive the invoice. Their questions and concerns may send a negative message to other clients in the waiting room, and they’ve put your front desk staff members in an awkward position. Why not allow clients to check out in the exam room, right when they finish their appointment? Adding a laptop or even a tablet in each exam room enables clients to view the invoice electronically and ask questions if anything is unclear. (Windows tablets allow for full-running versions of ImproMed software.) Receipts and follow-up educational materials can be emailed to clients for later reference or printed at the front desk on the way out. Clients can also pay with a credit or debit card, right in the exam room. (This can be done quickly and easily with ImproMed Payment Solutions, which offers credit card processing services that integrate with ImproMed software.)

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GIVE YOUR CLIENTS SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT Remember those photos you’ve been taking of each patient, storing them in the electronic patient record? They will really come in handy with this last tip. Use them to create a personalized Pet ID card for each of your patients. ImproMed Pet ID cards are small plastic cards (about the size of a driver’s license) that contain a pet photo, contact information for the practice, vaccination and service due dates, and other helpful information. They’re great tools for reminding pet owners of upcoming services due and keeping your practice top-of-mind, and they also promote referrals from happy clients who had a great experience in your clinic. These are just a few examples of how technology can help boost the client experience, the first step toward long-term customer loyalty. Veterinary medicine is truly a service business. If you’d like assistance with these or other suggestions, we’re happy to help.

WHY WELLNESS PLANS? When you think of wellness plans, what comes to mind? Is it a preventative care plan for your patients? Is it a reliable, easy, affordable option for your clients? A revenue generation center for your practice? A comprehensive wellness offering should contain all three – without discounting your current services. With a deeper look at wellness plans, you can increase the health of your practice as well has the health of your patients. The most commonly used wellness plan in the industry is the puppy plan. For puppy patients, most practices include basic vaccinations plus a few wellness screen visits. Facilitating plans by including just the basics isn’t necessarily wrong, but it could limit your practice’s revenue growth as well as the quality care you could be providing over an extended period of time. Your practice management software can help you set up and implement a variety of wellness plans to benefit your patients, your clients, and your practice. Here are some key reasons you should be thinking about integrating wellness plans from your software into your workflow. First, let’s take a look at what wellness plans should accomplish. They should encourage regular visits to you, the veterinarian. With appropriately planned care over the lifetime of the patient, you will be able to provide services that lead to healthier pets with a better quality of life. When you see patients on a regular basis, serious illnesses and conditions can be caught and treated earlier. Being able to provide better patient outcomes will lead to higher client satisfaction and a better ongoing relationship between you and your customers. Next let’s take a look at why wellness plans will help your practice from a revenue perspective. Most clients love their pets, but not all clients love the expenses that pets can entail. There are few worse situations than clients

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who suffer from sticker shock at checkout. Clients never want to feel as though they can’t care for their pets due to the expense. Wellness plans essentially make pet health care affordable by turning the expected annual cost of care into a monthly payment plan. For example, offering a plan for $30 per month for one year is more palatable then a lump sum due of $300. Positioning this as an affordable option for clients can keep the necessary care going without the dreaded conversation of cost. You provide regular, consistent care for your patients while driving consistent revenue for your practice. Another way wellness plans will benefit your practice is by differentiating your practice from others in the area. Wellness plans show that you are focused on the longterm care of your patients and clients as well as making that care very affordable.You can use that as a positioning tool to market your practice and grow your client base. The plans will allow you to provide excellent long-term care for both existing and new patients alike.

Now let’s focus on how you can use your practice management software to create and implement wellness plans as part of your regular workflow. ImproMed offers wellness plans that allow you to bundle different services together to create wellness packages at set prices for the different types of patients you serve. Once set up, your software helps you manage these plans by collecting regular payments and managing appointments throughout the year. To make collecting payments even easier, you can tie your plans to reoccurring credit card payments, so clients are charged automatically each month. For example, ImproMed offers integrated credit card processing, as well as the ability to store credit card information on file securely through tokenization. Then, regular wellness plan payments are made automatically at regular intervals.

UPCOMING EVENTS INDUSTRY TRADE SHOWS Join us at the ImproMed booth and see what’s new! WVC March 6 – 8, 2017 Las Vegas, NV Booth 3736 AAHA March 31 – April 1, 2017 Nashville, TN Booth 328

This accomplishes a couple of things. First, it lessens your accounts receivable and gets your practice paid more quickly. It also creates a steady income flow for the practice. Having credit cards on file provides an automatic payment that clients no longer have to worry about. Regular payments happen automatically.

APVC April 21 – 23, 2017 Halifax, Nova Scotia Located at the scil booth Booth 16&17

Now that we have examined why and how wellness plans will benefit you and the health of your practice, let’s take a moment to uncover why they are also an excellent offering for your clients. When purchasing wellness plans, your clients have essentially budgeted and paid for their pets’ wellness program in advance. With the cost of the visit and procedures already taken care of, clients are more likely to pick up additional products when they visit the clinic, such as pet food and accessories.

LATEST SOFTWARE VERSIONS

When wellness plan clients come in, you can even promote specials specifically for them, such as a certain percentage off of retail products. This provides clients with extra incentive to purchase additional items, as well as promote the wellness offering to those who haven’t taken advantage of it yet. By implementing wellness plans, you create a win-win-win for your patients, your clients, and your practice. Patients get the care they need. Clients have a better experience because pet health care becomes easy and affordable. Your practice benefits from a steady revenue stream and differentiation among competitors. Check with us to see how wellness plans can boost the health of your practice in 2017.

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ImproMed Version: 5.2 sr3 ImproMed Equine Version: 3.2 sr3 ImproMed Advantage+ Version: 30.410 Vetech Advantage Version: 25.410 DVM Manager: Version: 5.2.5300

MARKETING YOUR PRACTICE

TOP FIVE CLIENT RETENTION MISTAKES (AND HOW TO FIX THEM) How many veterinary practices are focused on attracting new clients? All of them, right? Most practices easily spend 1% to 3% of their gross income on new client acquisition efforts every year, and that’s no chump change. You do everything you can to get clients in the door, and you try to provide the best experience possible when they are in your practice. But after they leave, how do you make sure they keep coming back? Providing great service is a key component, of course, but retention marketing is also vital. This type of marketing focuses on keeping your clients engaged with your practice after their initial visit. Youve spent a lot of money attracting those new clients, so retaining them should be a top priority in your overall marketing strategy. Here are the top five mistakes practices are making when it comes to retention marketing—and how to fix them.

NOT MEASURING CLIENT SATISFACTION

Solution: Measure, Measure, Measure After the Visit You may think you’re providing a great client experience, but how do you really know? You need to use tools to actually measure how clients perceived their visit to your practice. If you aren’t measuring client satisfaction via online surveys, you may find out the hard way that someone had a less-than-perfect experience at your practice. A negative review can affect not only your online practice reputation, but also your revenue.

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So what can you do to make sure you stay ahead of the curve and learn about your clients opinions before you stumble upon them online? Incorporating post-visit surveys into your overall marketing strategy is a great first step. Surveys provide clients with the opportunity to engage with your practice before going online and possibly posting a negative review, giving you the chance to learn more and correct any ongoing issues. Ideally, you should send automated post-visit surveys within 72 hours of each client visit. Make sure the survey is short and to the point—five simple questions at most. Many clients want to share feedback, so make sure there is an open text field at the end of the survey. The Rapport suite of client communications tools offers client satisfaction measurement services, such as automated thank-you emails with surveys for your practice. The best part? The services integrate seamlessly with your ImproMed software.

FAILING TO APPRECIATE BRAND ADVOCATES

Solution: Appreciate Clients Who Appreciate You Who are your brand advocates? And what are brand advocates anyway? Brand advocates are the people who come to your practice and then go online to tell everyone how amazing you are. These clients aren’t just telling one person how great your practice is—they’re telling the world. It is a great accolade for one of your clients to take the time to go online and post a five-star review of your practice. And did you know that positive online reviews contribute to a higher ranking on Google? This positive word of mouth online will help you gain new clients and build revenue. Thats why, in addition to seeking new online reviews, part of your retention strategy should be to appreciate and respond to clients who give you positive reviews. Doing so is a great way to separate yourself from your competitors. Sound complicated? Vetstreet from Henry Schein offers a social management platform that aggregates all of your reviews into one easy-to-access, simple dashboard that

you can review anytime. The service also enables you to reply to reviews right from your dashboard. In addition, it offers a library of effective responses to reviews to help save you time.

SENDING REMINDERS ONLY VIA POSTCARD

Solution: Add Digital Reminders Even though the veterinary world is moving toward a more digital platform, postcard reminders remain critical to the overall success of your practice’s reminder program. With reminders, the key to success is delivering digital messages in conjunction with postcards. Today’s practices must find new ways to connect with busy clients. Not only do text reminders allow clients to act instantly — most text messages are read within 3 minutes and have a 45% response rate (according to data from Vetstreet) — but text messages also reduce the time your staff spends making phone calls and saves the practice money. People don’t ignore text messages; on the contrary, most get excited when they see a new message in their inbox. Be sure to ask your clients for their mobile number instead of home number.

FORGETTING ABOUT LAPSING AND LAPSED PATIENTS

Solution: Institute an Ongoing Lapsed Patient Marketing Campaign Your lapsing or lapsed clients are those who have not come in for a visit within the past 18 months or longer. As time goes on, these patients are less likely to return to the practice because at this point your reminder program has already gone through its cycle. Many practices tend to forget about these clients, but the fact is they offer untapped potential within your overall marketing strategy. We know it is more expensive to gain a new client than it is to retain an existing client. So don’t give up on this group. Instead, create a campaign to re-engage these clients. Target clients who have not visited the practice in more than 18 months. Reach out to them via telephone, email, postcard, and/or letter. Should you include an offer? Studies have shown that not including an offer is often more successful because it feels more sincere and less promotional. Track your success, learn from your clients, and clean up your database.

NOT ENGAGING WITH CLIENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Solution: Share, Like, Post When we think of social media, we tend to think automatically of Facebook. But, what might surprise you is that your practice may already be on Instagram and you might not even know it. Why should Instagram be part of your overall marketing strategy? Think about how Google and Yelp created listings for your practice that you had to go ahead and claim. Guess what? Instagram has done the same. Try downloading the Instagram app on your phone. Then, open Instagram, click on the magnifying glass, and type in your practice name. At this point, you may see a number of photos and postings. These are from people who have tagged your practice on Instagram. As a retention strategy, you’ll want to engage with these clients by replying to their posts and thanking them for sharing their pet’s photos and their experiences at your practice. All of the information they are sharing is public. Social media word of mouth advertising on platforms like Instagram is an easy way to enhance your brand. We understand that marketing a veterinary practice is not an area that many practitioners are comfortable addressing, but effective marketing and client communications are integral to practice success. Client retention should be an important part of every veterinary practice’s marketing strategy. After all, you’ve spent valuable time and money to bring clients into your practice; it only makes sense to extend the effort to keep them coming back. To learn more about how Rapport can help, contact us at 855-980-9099 or [email protected].

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NEWS TO NOTE

NEW NAMES FOR YOUR IMPROMED SOFTWARE The New Year is bringing new changes to the names of our flagship software products. Because the ImproMed brand is well-known and trusted across the industry, we’re changing the names of our Infinity software to ImproMed and Triple Crown software to ImproMed Equine. Our other brands, such as Advantage+ and DVM Manager, will remain unchanged, and you’ll still be able to find support for all software products on ImproMed.com, iCAN, and 800-925-7171.

IMPROMED IS NOW PART OF HENRY SCHEIN VETERINARY SOLUTIONS Over the past few years, Henry Schein has purchased several veterinary technology brands, including ImproMed. This year, we are excited to announce that we are combining these brands under one global umbrella, Henry Schein Veterinary Solutions. Under this new umbrella brand, the ImproMed software and services you trust will continue to be developed and

supported by the team members you work with every day. You’ll experience the same sales and customer service assistance that you have come to rely on and trust. By creating one Henry Schein organization focused on technology solutions for your practice, we believe we can better serve you by working more closely with all of Henry Schein’s resources worldwide. Over the coming weeks, you’ll begin to see a few changes. For example, our new Henry Schein Veterinary Solutions logo will be placed on our websites and marketing materials, along with the ImproMed logo you already know. You will also start to receive invoices, statements, and correspondence from Henry Schein Veterinary Solutions, LLC – our new legal entity. More than ever, we are committed to developing and supporting the ImproMed products and services you use, and we look forward to continuing to work together to help your practice thrive.

NEW! Measure the right metrics to grow your practice. To improve and grow your veterinary business, you must measure the things that influence its performance. The new Sparkline Scorecard tracks over 40 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on a monthly basis to monitor the processes and activities to boost revenue and profits. Sparkline pulls the data right out of your ImproMed software and displays it in an easy-to-read manner, with red and green symbols to show you what’s working … and what’s not. The easy-to-understand dashboards provide your practice with everything you need to know to measure success and improve the performance of your business.

For more information, call 855-478-7920 or email [email protected]

TRAINING CORNER

HOW HARDY IS YOUR HARD DRIVE? The hard drive you select can impact speed, performance, and lifespan of your workstations. What does a hard drive do? Storage is the hard drive’s responsibility. The hard drive is the permanent memory system of your computer. Not just documents, pictures, or music... your program data, user preferences, and the operating system are all stored on your computer’s hard drive. Up until recently, we had little choice in the type of storage available for a computer. Now you are able to configure your system with either a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). Both SSDs and HDDs do the same job: they boot your system and store your applications and personal files. How do they differ, and which is best for your practice? Allow us to get a bit technical (but we’ll still try to make it fun). The key difference between the two is mechanics. An HDD has moving parts. Basically, it is a metal platter with a magnetic coating that stores your data. A read/write head on an arm accesses the data while the platters are spinning, almost like a record player. An SSD stores data on interconnected flash memory chips that retain the data even when there’s no power present. So what does that mean for your practice?

FASTER SPEED. A typical HDD takes approximately 5,000 to 10,000 microseconds to access data. Conversely, an SSD has access speeds of 35 to 100 microseconds. What does this mean? Faster access speeds mean that programs can run more quickly, which is very important in a veterinary clinic, especially with large amounts of data like your operating system and practice management system. An SSD equipped computer will boot in less than one minute, and sometimes just a few seconds, whereas an HDD requires

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time to speed up to operating specs and will continue to be slower than an SSD during normal use.

LESS NOISE. If you are looking for a quiet drive, the SDD is the way to go. It has no moving parts, therefore minimal noise. With its spinning platter and moving read/ write heads, an HDD can often be one of the loudest components within your computer. LESS ELECTRICITY. HDDs have moving parts and additional requirements to spin the platters to retrieve data, which requires more electricity. An SSD uses less power, which not only equates to a lower electricity bill but a longer battery life within laptops.

LONGER LIFESPAN. With moving parts comes

added heat, which can slowly damage electronics over time. With the additional pet hair, dander, and dust that can clog hard drives in a veterinary practice, any opportunity to reduce heat in your computer is a good idea. The SSD flash memory generates less heat, helping to increase its lifespan.

MORE RELIABILITY. The magnetic platters and moving parts within HDDs get worn down every time they are used. The more frequently they are used, the faster they wear out. As we’ve mentioned a few times now, since SSDs have no moving parts, they provide better performance and extend reliability significantly. SSD or HDD? By now you’ve probably figured it out ... we recommend solid-state drives for all workstations within a veterinary practice for better reliability, longer lifespan, faster speeds, and more. They consistently stand up to the demands of a harsh practice environment and outlast the traditional hard disk drive. Need to know which kind of hard drive is running in your workstation? Want to find out if you can increase performance and reliability with an SSD? Contact our hardware specialists today at [email protected] or 800-925-7171.

TECH SUPPORT

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT: MAKE SURE THE PRICE IS RIGHT This is the first article in a series covering inventory management best practices. Did you know that inventory is the second largest cost in a veterinary practice? Managing and tracking inventory can be a tedious process if done manually, and the chance of human error is great. In addition, the cost to purchase inventory can change significantly from day to day, so it’s very possible to sell a product for less than you paid for it. If you delay entering inventory information into your system by even one day and the cost of your entire purchased inventory goes up, imagine the lost profits. You could easily lose $100,000 in a single year. Leveraging your software to manage inventory properly can make inventory management easier and keep you from losing unnecessary profits. The first step to improving your inventory management is to price your inventory correctly. Inventory are the items you purchase from a vendor, and products/services are the things you add to an invoice. The amount you pay for inventory should influence the selling price of the products. There are two common pricing structures: fixed and mark-up pricing. In fixed-pricing, the selling price of an item does not change as the cost for the item changes. If you are in a highly competitive market, you may need to have fixed pricing on certain products to remain competitive. Yet fixed pricing can be very dangerous if not managed regularly. Price increases can sneak up on you, so you should consistently check your profit margin to be sure your costs don’t exceed your sales price.

Your practice management software can make this job easier. For example, ImproMed has a variety of reports and features that can quickly identify inventory pricing concerns. The Product Spreadsheet feature can sort all of the products and services you sell by how they are priced, fixed or marked-up. This allows you to quickly identify whether fixed-price products should have a markup. You’ll need to dive into more detail to make sure things are set up properly, but knowing if you are using a proper pricing model is the first step. Mark-up pricing uses a set mark-up amount, usually a percentage, to determine the selling price. When the cost goes up, the selling price will also increase and you will maintain your desired margin. Mark-up pricing is generally the preferred method for inventory management, as it allows you to maintain your margins even when your costs increase. It is important to constantly review the mark-up percentage used and evaluate if you are leaving money on the table or are pricing yourself out of the market. Again, your practice management software can make this job easier. When receiving inventory, ImproMed will alert you if the cost has increased and will automatically increase the selling price for the items using mark-up pricing. This automation eliminates the need for staff members to remember to do this, keeping your profit margins consistent. Now that you know the first step in proper inventory management, you can make sure that your pricing structure is set up correctly. Up next: how to minimize shrinkage and lost revenue.

855-478-7920 | www.ImproMed.com POWERING SUCCESSFUL PRACTICES

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