Latest News February 2023

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The expected December downturn happened as predicted, but will it continue?

It was no surprise when we aggregated out National Industry Healthcheck for December 2022 to see that there had been an 8.7% decrease in invoice numbers and a 6.7% decrease in the number of patients seen when compared to December 2021. 

Pet owners are eventually going to go back to their pre-COVID behaviour. This means going on holiday, visiting relatives, spending more than they should on presents and having hundreds of social commitments. And these things are not compatible with having elective procedures done on your pet. 

Pre-COVID, December was always a bad month for workload in veterinary practices. This temporarily changed over COVID, but now it’s back to the old habits for most.

Does this mean we expect to have a booming 2023? Probably not.
The workload in veterinary practices has had negative values for almost 12 months, so the boom actually ended in 2021 about 12 months ago.

We don’t foresee that any well run practices will suffer considerably in 2023, but there will be a gradual loss in workload which will likely effect practices running at low profits. This pressure may actually put some slight relief in the staffing shortage where these poor performing practices may reduce staff numbers and good performing practices won’t be so busy that they can’t cope.

Regular price reviews is also something that we will look forward to this year. Last year having assisted many of you maintain healthy profit margins with strategic price rises, we will be doing the same this year. Because inflation is still on the up, if you fail to increase prices, your money is worth less and less. At the current rates of inflation we are advising 2 or more price increases in the year. If you don’t do this you will not be able to keep up with increasing staff wages and supply costs.

If you want to look at the actual numbers in the industry tracker, just go to the http://www.profitdiagnostix.com website registration page: https://profitdiagnostix.com/register
This will give you a login that allows you to see the data every month when we publish it.

What should you do if your client numbers are dropping?

Because we predicted the fall in workload around 12 months ago, for those of you who fit the ctiteria, we have prepared in advace a ‘customer reactivation service’ which is proving to be very useful.

So what are the criteria?

• You have to be using Profitdiagnostix software, if not, you can just sign up.
• You have to be able to fit in more appointments ie. your appointment schedule has some available spaces.

Don’t do this if you are a practice that is struggling to fit in consultations and having to turn clients away because your appointment book is full. Our feeling is that at least half of the veterinary practices are in this position. These practices would be better off increasing prices significantly and losing more of their bottom tier clients.

However we have been helping a number of practices over the last few months who were fortunate enough to find sufficient staff over the COVID boom and now want to maintain the workload in the face of slowly decreasing client, patient and appointment numbers.

For these practices we have been using very advanced and unique tools that track patient visits over a period of 24 months. We use these to identify high value patients that have become disengaged with the practice and send them 3 text messages in an effort to re-engage their owner.

What’s more, the really unique part is that we can then track if they return and actually spend money at the practice. This allows us to accurately assess if the cost of the campaign is worthwhile so we can stop it in subsequent years if it is not working for that practice.

If you are interested in this please let us know, we will assess your client loss and whether you fit the bill for this type of customer re-activation. We are estimating between 30-50% of practices may be in this position.

Interested parties please email: [email protected]

Web Event – Wed 1st Feb 12 noon QLD time

The year has kicked off so its time to get online and have some fun over lunchtime with one of our entertaining web events.

In theme with todays news, we will be discussing:

• The current state of the industry
• How we think things are going to play out over the next 12 months
• Inflation and price changes
• How to re-activate highly engaged clients that have fallen off the wagon

Click here to register:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YBqMKcFEQgWfh906mzHVaQ

12 noon QLD time
Wednesday 1st February

Dog Tales – What makes me a high value patient!

Humans love to talk! Sometimes they just don’t shut up! I remember once, when my mom and dad were watching a marketing web event, this crazy person started talking about the 80/20 rule – in most businesses 20% of clients are responsible for 80% of the revenue.

I remember thinking ‘what a lot of rubbish, this guy should just stop yapping!’. I was basing my logic on my experience with bone-chewing. The 80/20 rule certainly does not hold true for this – get equal entertainment and nutrition for 100% of the bone and would never even think about only keeping 20% of it and giving 80% away to one of the other pooches around me.

It seems however that it is wrong to compare bone-chewing with business dynamics. Enlightenment came to me this month when, alongside my pancreatitis, missing front leg, deafness, heart failure and renal failure I got a melting ulcer on my eye (because I also have corneal degeneration). This prompted my mom and dad to compare themselves with the ‘average veterinary client’ and they added up their annual vet bills. Remembering also that I have a rather accident prone Dachshund with growth deformities as a step brother and (fortunately) a fairly health step-sister Chihuahua cross. How much I wonder, if at all, did we exceed the national average annual client spend of about $900?

We won’t go into the precise numbers but let’s say it exceeded 20X that value! It therefore stands to reason that our family is worth more than 20 average clients. The reality is that there are probably a few families just like us – hence I have to accept the 80/20 rule is a reality.

You may ask how do you identify such a pet family? The answer is easy, in these families the pets are in control!