When I first started working with DVMcenter, in 2017, I remember our scheduling process was…archaic, shall we say. We were filling out sheets of paper and then typing into very basic software after the phone call. Personally typing out EVERY email, and manually sending everything ourselves. We then graduated to an excel spreadsheet that we filled out during a call, then transferred into that basic software, but still filling out templates and manually sending out all of our email.

As DVMcenter grew, we were needing to find a scheduling software that improved our efficiency but didn’t have all the extra “fluff” that other veterinary software does. Fate was in our favor when we met Dr. Casey Hill, who not only owned her own in-home euthanasia practice, but she also developed software as a hobby.

Dr. Casey has been able to build customized software specifically for DVMcenter, to improve the experience of scheduling for our support specialists, clients, and doctors. She has given us the program of our dreams which include many automated processes such as confirmation and grief emails, clinic notifications, and pricing quotes.

Contact Form

Buddy includes a contact form that is specific to each of our practices but also includes all of the information needed to schedule a visit. This contact form is filled out for every phone call or email sent to a DVMcenter member. It is broken down into five categories:

• Client information
• Pet information
• Visit details – Detailed information about the pet’s diagnosis or symptoms, date/time the visit is scheduled, etc.
• Finance – Using pricing data, Buddy will automatically add up services and pricing based on location, weight, and services selected.
• Checklists – Our checklists include COVID protocols, behavior, multiple pets, etc. that will populate if indicated elsewhere in the form. These checklists help our support staff keep better track of practice nuances, and use them as guides on how to schedule more difficult visits such as aggressive pets, or hospice consultations that require multiple visits to be blocked off, or records to be requested.

Buddy Calendar

The calendar used to help our support specialists schedule visits based on the doctors’ availability is modeled after Google Calendar. Doctors can create their own schedules and are able to sync them to their own Google Calendar to see their scheduled visits. Doctors and support staff are able to add notes to each appointment slot if there are any restrictions for scheduling such as pet size or type of appointment. The support team utilizes color-coded appointment slots to indicate special notes, fees, and unavailable visits.

Reports

Buddy also has the ability to put together reports for each practice that can be viewed with certain date parameters. We offer several different reports that can be downloaded into Excel to find more detailed information about each practice. Some of our reports include:

• Incomplete Visit Report – This report keeps track of the visits that still need completion to make sure nothing falls between the cracks.
• Inactive Visit Report – This report tracks why a caller did not schedule a visit. For example, our team notes whether they were out of service area, had pricing concerns, or if the availability did not meet their needs.
• Production Report – This report breaks down the number and amount of each service offered and can also further break it down by provider.
• Visit Detail Report – This report can be used as a catch-all for most information about each visit. It includes client name, pet name, weight, provider, visit type, status, region, visit total, and payment received.

Record Keeping

Buddy is also able to keep track of records for each patient. When a visit is finished, the doctor will go through a completion process that records any medical notes, payment taken at the visit, and a place to create a task for support to perform such as add another rDVM or change cremation from communal to individual. Buddy automatically sends rDVM notifications and a supportive email follow ups to clients as well.

We all know that one of the hardest parts of saying goodbye to a pet is making the decision about when or if to help with euthanasia. Clients are often stuck between being the fear of deciding too soon and not wanting it to be too late. Our team is trained to have these quality-of-life conversations with clients. Even though we have never met their pet before, clients expect us to be able to help them in deciding if it’s the right time and we are here to help guide them through the considerations.

To do this, we use a tool called the JOURNEYS Scale. This scale is designed to help an owner rate their pet’s quality of life. Each letter in JOURNEYS stands for a different aspect of quality of life for a pet.

J – Jumping or Mobility

O – Ouch or Pain

U – Uncertainty and Understanding (factors that affect YOU)

R – Respiration or Breathing

N – Neatness or Hygiene

E – Eating and Drinking

Y – You

S – Social Ability

There are many other versions and types of quality of life scales, and all scales provide similar helpful insight for families. These scales can be especially helpful for phone teams to use to help clients walk through each aspect and consider the numeric values. After speaking to the client and hearing their concerns, we will send them this scale to then fill out. If a pet’s quality of life is changing daily, then taking this scale daily would be recommended. And, if a pet is still feeling well, it can be helpful for clients to fill out a scale to use as a baseline to help them stay aware of upcoming changes. It can also be helpful for couples or families who aren’t yet in full agreement, as this tool can serve as an objective measurement and conversation guide.

We have found that the quality of life scale helps clients to feel more at peace with making the decision. The scale and it’s score provide them with a navigation tool, something outside of themselves that helps them know if they are on the right track.

Bearing the full responsibility for making this incredibly painful and important decision for their pet can feel overwhelming. For many families, these decisions are new and unfamiliar, and they may be afraid that they are missing something important. Sometimes, they may even know in their hearts that it’s time to help their pet, but they want permission or affirmation. While we can’t answer this question for them, we can provide an objective tool that can help validate a client’s decision and guide them in the right direction.

Whether it is a scary diagnosis, mobility issues, or loss of cognitive function, families having to face the decision of saying goodbye to their beloved pet have so many questions. They often reach out to us at a time when they are feeling overwhelmed, vulnerable, and exhausted. Our aim as Support Specialists at DVMcenter is to make this experience for each client a little less scary, to give them a sense of relief, and to let them know that helping their pet say goodbye, in the comfort of their own home, can be a beautiful final gift. Not only are we here to help answer any questions they may have about your services, but we are also here to validate their feelings with compassion, support, and understanding. 

At DVMcenter, we have an extensive hiring process to ensure that we only bring on the most caring and compassionate candidates, who understand the importance of the human-animal bond. Our hiring process includes: 

• Email Interview Questions
• Phone Interview
• Initial Zoom Interview with 2 managers
• 2nd zoom interview with remaining management team and shadowing experience

All these steps in our hiring process allow for us to not only get to know each candidate well, but we can also take note of how they articulate their words over email, how their voice and demeanor come through over the phone, and how conduct themselves in a professional setting.

Our team consists of Support Specialists with backgrounds in veterinary technology, social work, human services, and even human health care.  Although veterinary experience is helpful, it is not required. We have specialized training modules to help educate those without a veterinary background as it is very important for our staff know about triaging emergent calls and common terminal illnesses. Our training is never finished, even after our initial training program has been completed, we meet as a team monthly to go talk over tough subjects, such as helping families with children cope with loss, how to conduct a “check-in” call for those clients who may need a little additional support after their visit, and ways to keep ourselves as proficient and efficient. 

We have immense pride in the team we have built and can ensure that you and your clients are in the best of hands.

The image above has been created from all of the different words our doctors use to describe our Support team at DVMcenter.

Written by Rebecca McComas, DVM – Owner

A few colleagues and I stood in the back of the main ballroom on the last day of the International Association of Animal Hospice and Palliative Care (IAAHPC) annual conference. We were basking in the glow of our newly acquired medical and business knowledge and from the fun networking and conversation. We knew that glow would fade all-too-soon as we reentered our work lives back at home.

Recognizing it’s difficult for mobile practitioners to stay connected with colleagues, especially when spread across the US (and the world), I sought ideas for remaining in contact between conferences. I envisioned something similar to the monthly SCORE “CEO Forum” that I was a part of at home in Minneapolis. The CEO Forum follows a peer-to-peer coaching model with a moderator to keep conversation flowing.

In 2016, I started a new IAAHPC program called “Business Circles”. Every paying member of the organization is invited to participate, whether a new business owner or a seasoned veteran. Groups meet once a month online to discuss a designated monthly topic and share questions and challenges we are currently facing.

Group members benefit from the advice of others and share best practices for everything from marketing to bookkeeping to HR to strategic planning.

Here’s what you can expect from your BC group:

• Have a sounding board for your ideas and business options
• Expand your social network with friends in our niche of veterinary practice
• See more familiar faces at the annual conference
• Learn how to run your business more successfully
• Have an opportunity to help others

One of the best things about being involved with the IAAHPC for Rebecca has been finding a tribe of like-minded practitioners with similar business challenges.  Business Circles has fulfilled the need that many members have for friendly advice and a supportive ear.

Written by Rebecca McComas, DVM – Owner

In 2010, I started MN Pets, a home euthanasia practice in the Twin Cities, envisioning an flexible part-time job to stay busy when my children were in elementary school. Within a year, I saw this wasn’t going to be any sort of easy, part-time thing! The demands of operating a business and the local client demand for home euthanasia exceeded what I would be able to do on my own.

Though a bit scary and largely unfamiliar, I decided to hire other experienced veterinarians to help with appointments and compassionate social workers to help with answering our phones. We spent the next few years growing MN Pets and our team.

Then, in 2016, on the plane ride home from the annual IAAHPC conference, I had an epiphany. With a highly trained and supportive phone staff, as well as our scalable medical records computer system, I realized we could help other end-of-life colleagues by answering their phones, too.

We called this new branch of our practice ‘DVMcenter’, reflecting that it’s the central hub of client support for mobile end-of-life veterinarians.

My engineer spouse Jeff, who had always helped me with IT, marketing, and back-office support for MN Pets, decided to leave his corporate job at 3M to devote himself full-time to DVMcenter.

With Jeff and our veterinary social worker, Kristi Lehman’s, superb help as our Director of Operations, we’ve configured our team and processes to be able to successfully assist many other practices by answering their phones, scheduling their visits, and managing their calendar and medical records. We continually embrace the use of the latest phone and computer technology to grow our internal systems.

In keeping with our belief in the value of an interdisciplinary team, we’ve continued to grow, moving into our larger, newly remodeled office in 2017. Currently we have over 35 professionals on staff at both MN Pets and DVMcenter.

We are well-positioned to continue helping mobile, end-of-life practices with their client support needs from the east coast to the west coast and everything in between.

Rebecca has learned a lot from other mobile end-of-life providers through her involvement with IAAHPC Business Circles and helping DVMcenter member practices go through growing pains. It’s her greatest joy to hear from a member that DVMcenter has helped them reach that next stage of business growth successfully.

As mobile practices grow, the practice owner wears many hats: receptionist, counselor, veterinarian, bookkeeper, IT department, marketer. At some point, many owners feel their personal limitations becoming more apparent. Unfortunately, those limitations are hard to see coming. We tend to only see them when we’re tangled up in the thick of them.

The limitations are as varied as the practices themselves. When juggling business management, client phone calls, and in-home visits, you may be missing more than you’re gaining. You may be missing dinnertime with your kids, opportunities to help more families, increasing number of incoming phone calls, vacations and time away. All the hats you’re wearing begin to feel heavy, and it’s difficult to grow and move forward when you can’t hold your head up.

You are your business’s most important asset. When you are spread too thin, the talents and passion that brought you to this point begin to take a backseat to the day-to-day details that you can’t seem to stay ahead of.

No matter what measurements drives you – revenue, visits per month, the number of your daughter’s volleyball games you’re still able to attend – you want to feel that you have a focused control over the outcome.

When you feel that you’ve reached your limit, or if you can see your limit coming up over the horizon as you’re barreling towards it, consider how you can make more room. Make room for what you do best by hiring our team to do what we do best. DVMcenter’s team of support specialists are specially trained to respond to client’s needs. Whether the need is a listening ear, to schedule a euthanasia visit, handle payment, or guidance in end-of-life decisions, DVMcenter is an extension of your practice by providing expert support to your clients. You will begin to gain more than you miss.

Kristi has worked with MN Pets and DVMcenter since 2013. She manages the operations of both companies and provides ongoing support to ensure that doctors and their clients receive expert, compassionate care. Kristi is especially interested in mission-driven business management and human-animal bond centered practices.