Tentative Schedule

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Registration Open 4-8pm (Laurel Foyer)

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Registration Open 8am (Laurel Foyer)

Continental Breakfast 8am (Biltmore Foyer)

Exhibit Hall Open 8am (Blue Ridge)

Welcome Reception 5-6pm (Blue Ridge)

Speaker

Topic

Patty Lathan, VMD, MS, DACVIM

See Topics

8:30-10am (1.5 hrs) : Tips and Tricks on the Diagnosis of Canine Hyperadrenocorticism: A Case Based Approach

10:30am-11:30am (1 hr) : Update on the Monitoring of Canine Cushing’s Pheochromocytoma

1-2:30 (1.5 hrs) : Update on Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus in Dogs and Cats I

3-4:30pm (1.5 hrs) : Update on Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus in Dogs and Cats II

Louise Dunn, Snowgoose Veterinary Management Consulting

1) The 4 Elements of a Successful Culture So Don't Just Survive - But Thrive!

Description:  Sharing insights and tips among colleagues is often the best advice on how veterinary practices can manage their business through these unprecedented times. Navigating the COVID environment is one step, but providing management tips for the next phase – the recovery phase – is paramount to getting back on track. Even with all your best efforts, there is a “patient” that may be silently suffering, one that is being overlooked by you. This easily overlooked “patient” is your workplace culture.

Learning Objectives:

• Alleviate fear, anxiety, and stress in your hospital team.
• Utilize resources to form next steps to put the business in a good position moving forward
• Distinguish between what needs changed and what can help build a stronger culture

2) Why Can’t People Do What They Are Supposed To Do – And When to Cut the Cord

Description: It is an all too familiar topic on discussion boards and meetings with a consultant – why can’t people just do what they are supposed to do? Why can’t people follow the procedures and protocols we set up? When is it time to finally cut the cord and terminate the person? Instead of lamenting the behavior, change how you engage and train the team; and put a procedure in place for evaluating and terminating a poor performer.

Learning Objectives:

• Employ 10 steps to engage the team to do what they are supposed to do
• Utilize the steps for every situation – new hire, performance improvement, and termination protocols
• Strengthen the management team’s skills for conducting evaluations and coaching

3) Recruiting Strategies and HR by the Numbers: “What a Successful Hiring Program Looks Like”

Description: Benchmarking, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), Metrics…managing a business often means being bombarded by numbers. The problem is, which numbers are important, which metrics are good, and which KPI will truly help with decision making? Metrics are important; the trick is to identify the ones important for the success of your practice. When the numbers tell you it is time to recruit, it is imperative that there is a strategic game plan in place for attracting the right person.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the value of properly defining the business questions you want to answer
• Identify which metrics will provide you with insight for proper decision making
• Effectively apply strategic steps to recruit the right person, the right fit

4) Take The Temperature of Your Team With a Survey and Build a Stronger Team

Description: When managing a veterinary business, what you don’t know can hurt you. This applies to treating a patient, providing great client services, and having a high-performance team. The problem is we are sometimes afraid to find out what we don’t know because it means we may have to change things, and change can be difficult. Take steps to create a team survey that provides feedback you can act upon to build a great team that delivers excellent patient care and business success.

Learning Objectives:

• Deepen your understanding about why you should conduct a survey
• Craft a survey and team building activities to enhance teamwork
• Effectively utilize survey responses and metrics to build a stronger team

Welcome Reception at 5 - 6 pm - with Complimentary food and drinks; compliments of the exhibitors

Friday, November 20, 2020

Registration Open 8am (Laurel Foyer)

Exhibit Hall Open 8am-4pm (Blue Ridge)

Breakfast Session 7:30-8:15am - "Mitigating Risk in the Age of Entitlement” presented by Rod Finnegan, Sponsored by Vetinsure

Lunch Session 11:30am – Laser Therapy Simplified: A quick review of Novel Conditions. Don’t forget the eyes or lungs, the bladder , the pancreas! with David Bradley, DVM, FASLMS Sponsored by Summus Medical Laser

Are you using your laser for intra-abdominal, intrathoracic, or intra-operative conditions? How about ophthalmic conditions? Laser therapy can provide valuable benefits in helping to resolve and manage many conditions involving these areas. It can reduce the frequency and severity of recurrences, reduce complications, reduce the medications needed, and improve the quality of life. Specific conditions and proper guidelines to ensure safe and effective results will be presented.

Amelia G. White, DVM, MS, DACVD

8:30-10am (1.5 hrs) : Tips for managing canine otitis externa

10:30-12:00pm (1.5 hrs) : Tips for managing feline otitis

1-2:00 (1 hrs) : Simplifying the dermatological approach to the itchy cat

2:30-3:30pm (1 hrs) : It’s canine MRSP pyoderma again-Now what?

Caroline Betbeze, DVM, MS, DACVO

8:30-10am (1.5 hrs) : Recent Advances in Dry Eye Disease

10:30-11:30am (1 hrs) : Feline Corneal Diseases

1-2:30 (1.5 hrs) : The Fundic Examination: A Whole New World

3-4pm (1 hrs) : Ocular Emergencies

Louise Dunn, Snowgoose Veterinary Management Consulting

Peter Weinstein, DVM MBA, PAW Consulting

Sponsored by Care Credit

1) Your Practice is Bleeding – Prevent the Loss!

Description: When you hear the term, “loss prevention,” most people immediately think, “theft prevention”. Many of us think veterinary practices do not suffer loss from theft as high as retail stores – and you may be right on that aspect of loss. However, what about the other areas a practice suffers loss? Are you aware of where you may have some “small bleeders” in your practice? A small one in safety, another little one in understocking inventory, a big one in a deviation from a Standard Operating Procedure. The fact is your practice is at risk – a risk of revenue loss, or a risk of increased liability due to a “loss”. Identify your bleeders and prevent a loss.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize your practice’s potential loss in key business areas
• Discern what a Loss Prevention Program should be for your practice
• Create an action plan to mitigate the risk and respond to identified bleeders

2) Tips to Improve Practice Profitability

Description: Every practice has some favorite metrics they routinely watch and use to evaluate how well the practice is doing. Are you using the best metrics for your practice? Are you struggling to make improvements and aren’t sure how to identify what is going well and what needs to change? Two areas that could use improvement are team wages and the lab. This session presents common pitfalls affecting wage percentage and lab profitability and offers options to rescue the hospital from potential failure.

Learning Objectives

• Identify effective next-generation metrics for your practice
• Gain a deeper understanding of pitfalls and how to mitigate the risk
• Develop an action plan to restore profitability and boost business operations

3) What We Can Learn (and Improve Upon) from Consolidators

Description: It is no secret that the veterinary consolidators are having an impact on the business of veterinary medicine. Do they have any secrets that you can implement in practice? As an independent practice, you have strengths and weaknesses that are different from the multi-practice ownership models. These strengths include flexibility, autonomy, and cohesiveness. On the other hand, the sheer number of practices gives the consolidators economies that have significant cost savings. From a human resource and marketing standpoint, what do you need to do to stay strong in the face of competition? What numbers do you need to be monitoring that the consolidators are looking at ? It is the small things that can make a huge difference. Do you know what they are?

Learning Objectives:

• Learn what consolidators are doing well
• Learn how you do the same things even better
• Learn what weaknesses independent practices can take advantage of.

4) Coaching A Team to Victory

Description: Practices are successful because of the teams that they put together and the coaching of those teams towards success. Individuality negatively impacts a practice success, as does the blame game. Coaches help to select a winning team, make them accountable and responsible for their actions and fully engage them to ensure a team that stays together and plays together to victory!

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the hiring team;
• Accountability for your results;
• Team building

Patty Lathan, VMD, MS, DACVIM

8:30-10am

10:30-11:30am

Update on treatment of Diabetes Mellitus in dogs and cats

Update on treatment of Diabetes Mellitus in dogs and cats part 2

Saturday, November 21, 2020

Registration Open 8am (Laurel Foyer)

Exhibit Hall Open: 8am-4pm (Blue Ridge)

Continental Breakfast: 8am (Blue Ridge)

Breakfast Session 7:30-8:15am - "Innovative ways of compounding medication to improve owner compliance and patient health” presented by Becky Zumo, Sponsored by BCP Veterinary Pharmacy

Dr. Margi Sirois, EdD, MS, RVT, CVT, LAT

8:30-10am : Practical Microbiology This session provides an overview of rapid, inexpensive tests that can be done in the small veterinary practice laboratory. New technologies for in-house microbiology will be explored.

(Sponsored by MicroVet Diagnostics)

10:30 - 11:30 am: Trends in Diagnostic Testing. New technologies have revolutionized the in-house veterinary practice laboratory. The diagnostic laboratory can be a significant profit center for the practice as well as providing rapid, accurate test results to aid the clinician in diagnosis.

(Sponsored by MicroVet Diagnostics)

1 - 2:30 pm: Cannabinoids in Veterinary Medicine: Promises and Challenges This presentation provides an overview of the  endocannabinoid system and the pharmacokinetics of certain cannabinoids . An overview of legal issues related to use of cannabinoids in veterinary medicine will be discussed as well as a summary of potential therapeutic uses of cannabinoids in dogs.

Joseph Jordan, PhD, CEO

NC Physicians Health Program

NC Veterinary Health Program

8:30-10am

10:15-11:30am

Drug Intervention in the Workplace

Recognizing Substance Use Disorders in the Workplace

Peter Weinstein, DVM MBA, PAW Consulting

1) WONJI- Working ON, Not Just IN Your Practice

Veterinary practices are routinely in a state of chaos which is psychologically and physically exhausting for all parties. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a more predictable staff experience? Patient experience? And Client Experience? By creating an Operations Manual and systematizing your practice you can help control the chaos. Problems can be prevented by anticipating what they are and making sure that the steps are in place to prevent. This program takes a pro-active approach to problem solving through systematizing what you can in your practice

Learning Objectives:

• Create a vision for your business
• Create the systems for the business, in all areas, that provide a consistent experience for the clients, patients, and staff;
• Learn how to work ON your business

2) Have You Called Your Practice Lately?

The telephone is the lifeline to your practice. On one end is a client or potential client seeking to have a problem solved. On the other end is veterinary hospital employee. And it is this variable that is of concern. Have you called your practice and listened to how calls are being handled? How professional is your practice being portrayed? Is your client service staff a barrier to your success? Scripts, communication training, and staff accountability are just a part of what is needed for a great client experience

Learning Objectives:

• why the telephone is a bane or a boon;
• what are scripts;
• how to engage over the phone without being robotic

3) The ON Time, Every Time Appointment

The appointment drives your day and your life. Whether you have ten-minute appointments or thirty-minute appointments, do you have a control of the client experience? Is your time choreographed from start to finish? From the time the client arrives to the to the time client leaves? Create a beautifully choreographed client experience featuring your entire team that you can then market with the guarantee the on time every time appointment.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn how to schedule appointments;
• learn different appointments require different amounts of time;
• control to the conversation

4) Creating a Retention Marketing System

You have all of these clients in your files and computer.  They are a goldmine.  What are you doing to keep your practice top of mind to them?  How often do you communicate with them and by what means?  This workshop will have you creating a 12-month Retention Marketing plan to reach you to your clients on a regular basis via educational marketing pieces that will have them coming in more often and better prepared to provide the best care for their pets

Learning Objectives:

• Identify areas of opportunity to educate your clients about better pet care;
• Identify the multitude of marketing tools that you can use to reach out to your clients
• Put the message (ideas) and the media (tools) together into a calendar and system that you can use almost immediately

Steve Dale, CABC (Fear Free, Practice Management/Marketing)

Mining Millennials

It turns out that millennials are as addicted to their pets as they are their phones and cat cafes. While data continues to demonstrate veterinary preventive care Thriving practices tend to have a thriving millennials base. The tide is changing and millennials are directing that change, as there is new data to demonstrate. So, who are these millennials and what do they want? In fact, they have a particular affinity for cats. Millennials are eager for targeted veterinary care to meet their needs. And these specific needs are addressed. It turns out, for starters, that Cat Friendly Practices and the Fear Free initiative may have turned up at just the right time to meet these needs. But if you build it, will be they come? How to market to millennials begins with understanding what they’re seeking and why. And surprise, millennials want relationships and might even be loyal if you meet their needs.

Learning objectives:

• What millennials are seeking regarding veterinary medicine.
• Millennials have a particular interest in cats
• How emotional needs of animals in clinic matter more than ever before and therefore Cat Friendly Practices and Fear Free are incredibly timely and relevant.
• Yes, social media and using technology are important to communicate with millennials – but still one on one trust matters more than anything else.

Even the Best Veterinarians Can’t Treat Invisible Clients

How to Market and Work Social and Traditional Media (Presented by a 30 Year Media Professional): A communication bootcamp, starting off with reaching millennial clients. From texting clients to using new systems and technology to easily support preventive care visits. Great grandpa veterinarian relied on relationships, and arguably that has surprisingly not changed. What’s changed is how to leverage those personal relationships, such as texting, and using social media as well as new in-office technology to communicate messages. How to reach dozens to hundreds of clients simultaneously – but the trick is to never lose that personal touch. Includes a basic primer on using social media to communicate with current clients and attract new ones, and how to create content, even writing a practice blog. It’s easier than you think. Creating a practice YouTube page, even a podcast is possible. Also, basic tips about using traditional media (which still does matter), appearing on TV or radio (from a presenter with decades of TV/radio experience). (1 or 2 hour talk)

Learning objectives

• If you’re not using social media, why you are losing out. But then what social media should you use.
• Where to find content. And how to deal with negative reviews.
• Tips on using social and also traditional media.
• Who is most important to reach for you and messaging you want to communicate.

3 hours

Sponsored by Weave

Sunday, November 22, 2020

Steve Dale, CABC (Fear Free, Practice Management/Marketing)

Sponsored by Nestle Purina

8:30-12pm

Cats Are No Longer Door Mats : How the Human Animal Bond with Cats Continues to Accelerate

For many years, cats have been the most popular pets, but under-medicalized and simply not treated with the same reverence as “man’s best (canine) friends.” There’s a lot in play changing that, particularly among millennials. And some the most significant reasons for compromised bonds with cats or relinquishing cats up ‘till now are changing, such as allergies and scratching. As for medicalization, Fear Free and Cat Friendly Practices have made a difference, and you’ll learn how. Also, more studies have been conducted demonstrating what we didn’t know about our bond with cats. Also discussed are myths regarding cats which unfortunately continue to persist. Clients are even training cats and taking them out in strollers or on leashes. How does that “craziness” (is it really that crazy?) really matter to your bottom line?