There's enormous untapped potential in many practices. Potential that lies not in fancy marketing programs or new services—but
in the wellness care and preventive medicine veterinarians recommend every day. Participants in Benchmarks 2008: A Study of
Well-Managed Practices told me that the most effective way to improve client compliance is for all doctors and staff members
to present a consistent message.
High-compliance practices use their written medical standards to define the message, and they discuss the standards regularly
during practice-wide meetings. Yet I've learned that doctors and team members fail to follow the standards much of the time—so
client compliance still lags.
The bottom line
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It probably happens more often than you think: The doctors in your practice charge for 30 minutes of surgery time when they
actually spent an hour in surgery with the patient. Or team members don't note all lab charges, and dollars slip through the
cracks. These aren't intentional misses; it's just that there's no mechanism built into your employees' routine to help them
be as accurate as possible. Remember, doctors' and team members' compliance with the practice's standards of care and fee
schedule is key to your bottom line. Here's where your practice management software enters the picture.
Take Dr. Christine Stevenson's practice, for example: Pinnacle Peak Animal Hospital is a five-doctor practice in Scottsdale,
Ariz., and a participant in the 2008 Well-Managed Practice study. Pinnacle Peak has grown dramatically more profitable since
Dr. Stevenson began using her practice management software to its fullest capabilities. She's been using this current system
for eight years, and even now, she's still learning new tricks. Her very first challenge—successfully met—was to learn how
to increase her team's speed and accuracy with everyday tasks like invoicing, creating estimates, and improving the accuracy
of accounts receivable. 
On the web
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Recently Dr. Stevenson has begun tracking her practice's daily transactions and missed charges. And this is where she's seen
big improvements. Since she began auditing her transactions, missed lab charges have shrunk by 66 percent. She's also seen
an increase in charges for surgical and anesthetic time. Because of the audits, the doctors are more accountable for accurately
reflecting how much time they spend in surgery, so they charge appropriately. And the accuracy has paid off: Surgery and anesthesia
charges have increased 25 percent.
Dr. Stevenson says the daily audits have made a huge difference in her practice's day-to-day operations and have helped reduce
the pressure on her to raise fees. "We don't conduct the audits with the intention of backcharging clients," she says. "We
do audits so we can evaluate our processes, find the holes, and patch them."
By the numbers
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Here's how the auditing process works with her practice management software: At the end of the day, a staff member prints
an audit trail report that includes all the daily transactions by client, a list of procedures completed that day, and the
doctor who performed each procedure. The report ensures that the proper doctor is credited for his or her work, surgical and
anesthesia time was properly charged, and the medical history for each patient is correct. If there's a mistake, it's corrected.
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