2023 Annual Meeting & Conference

Networking That's Fun, Clear Communication and Ethical, Non-Creepy Persuasion
Speaker: Marsha Shandur
If you think the words "networking" and "persuasion" have an air of fakeness, it is time to think again!

Productive and effective networking looks more like building friendships. Similarly, ethical persuasion is good for your people and your veterinary practice. When mastered, both have the potential to strengthen and support your work relationships.

In this highly energetic and interactive session, communication trainer Marsha Shandur will show you the simple steps to easy and impactful networking that's fun (really!). You'll also discover the three key components of ethical persuasion and smooth communication that work in any context professional context.

By the end of the workshop, you'll understand the core rules of effective and comfortable networking and how to prepare for persuasive interactions that yield productive interactions and outcomes.

Track A: The Intersection of Personal and Professional: Challenges Faced on the Leadership Journey
Speakers: Ray McGury and Mike Zegadlo
Some leadership lessons are learned during a stumble; others are learned during a sprint. When our personal lives and professional lives collide, we are forced to identify the leadership practices that can serve us best and to draw from the insights and experiences of others.  That is exactly what this program will do. The presenters will candidly share the tragedies and challenges that tested them personally and professionally, and pair them with an interactive discussion on the leadership approaches they have used to get through the unexpected and the unimaginable.

Track B: Operational Efficiency-You Don’t Have Time to Do it Twice  
Speaker: Peter Weinstein, DVM
With the busy-ness of the veterinary practice, it is imperative to develop the needed systems and processes to get things right the first time.  Operational efficiency will help with consistency, predictability.  By creating the needed systems and integrating them into required training, you can ensure that the team performs accurately and efficiently. Finally, the ultimate success from an efficiency standpoint is the ability to delegate tasks so that each individual does what they do best and what gives the greatest return to the practice.
 
Learn to: 
1. Define operational efficiency as it relates to a veterinary practice 
2. Identify operational inefficiency and how to fix it or eliminate it 
3. Create the systems and processes that are needed for daily optimal operational efficiency 
4. Delegate any tasks that can be delegated and how to do so

Track C: Veterinary Hospital Chart of Accounts – The Backbone of Healthy Accounting Records
Speaker: Matt. S. Nolan
The basis of reliable financial data is an organized approach for the methodic collection, recording, sorting, and summarization of information. A well-organized chart of accounts allows veterinary hospitals to make informed short- and long-term decisions. This presentation will help your hospital get organized.
 
Attendees will learn best practices for recording transactions in their bookkeeping software to ensure relevant and reliable data is available for decision-making.

Track D: How to Find Your Stride When Your Caseload is Overwhelming
Speaker: Melissa Cary, CVPM
The workload on emergency (ER) departments continues to grow at a tremendous rate. In this session, we will identify ways to manage an increased caseload while maintaining the quality of care. We will specifically look at the delegation of work and roles within the practice, collaboration with other ER practices, and improved processes for better case management. Finally, I will share best practices from my experience and some lessons learned from things I have tried.

Track A: Speaker Communication Training; Educating, Elevating & Sharing your Experiences, Part I
Speaker: Rebecca Rose, CVT
You have chosen to make a leap of faith, taking your passion within veterinary management to the community, educating, elevating, and sharing your knowledge. This is great! Congratulations.

Now is the time to begin embracing your will to facilitate engaging classes, taking your career advancement to the next level. You know the material you will be delivering inside and out. Hone your skills in a way in which your audiences and teams will learn, retain, and be moved to action, connecting with your adult learners! Know the nervous butterflies you feel (and will continue to feel as a speaker) are there to serve you and your audience. You will receive expert tips and tricks from within the realm of speaking and opportunities to set you and your attendees up for success.  A pre-conference survey and prework will be available before the session to support attendees in making the most of this training opportunity.

Two training sessions will help attendees build on and prepare for their roles as future speakers.

Part I – Harnessing and prepping – tips for success
Part II – Nuts, bolts, and feedback

Track B: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the Hospital Setting: Practical Applications to Make a Difference for Your Staff and Clients
Speaker: Susie Crockett, CVPM
We have heard more and more about the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), but what does this mean for you and your team? How does this impact your client's experience? In this session, we will discuss some critical points related to DEI and how you can change your hospital to improve your staff culture and client experience.

Track C: Analyzing Financial Reports and Evaluating Practice Performance
Speaker: Matt. S. Nolan
Financial statements identify, measure, and communicate information about the business. Understanding these statements can help hospitals manage by the numbers and understand how outside parties evaluate practice performance.
 
Attendees will learn key terminology and how to read and interpret the three primary financial statements. In addition, Matt will introduce relevant financial ratios and performance metrics to elevate financial acumen.

Track D: Leading Without Leading: The Art of Successful Communication and Delegation
Speaker: Ingrid Pyka, DVM Cert VMI
What role does communication play in fostering a motivated, collaborative, and loyal team? Everything!
This session will focus on the role that basic and advanced communication and listening techniques can play in growing collaboration, culture, and even employee retention while mitigating conflict.  Using skills learned in the first half of the session, attendees will focus on applying them to identifying and activating people's unique strengths and weaknesses, learning the unique motivators for each, and integrating these dynamics into the current staff. Ultimately, the goal is to use strategies learned to delegate the right person to the right job so that everyone wins!

Track A: Speaker Communication Training; Educating, Elevating & Sharing your Experiences, Part II
Speaker: Rebecca Rose, CVT
You have chosen to make a leap of faith, taking your passion within veterinary management to the community, educating, elevating, and sharing your knowledge. This is great! Congratulations.

Now is the time to begin embracing your will to facilitate engaging classes, taking your career advancement to the next level. You know the material you will be delivering inside and out. Hone your skills in a way in which your audiences and teams will learn, retain, and be moved to action, connecting with your adult learners! Know the nervous butterflies you feel (and will continue to feel as a speaker) are there to serve you and your audience. You will receive expert tips and tricks from within the realm of speaking and opportunities to set you and your attendees up for success.  A pre-conference survey and prework will be available before the session to support attendees in making the most of this training opportunity.

Two training sessions will help attendees build on and prepare for their roles as future speakers.

Part I – Harnessing and prepping – tips for success
Part II – Nuts, bolts, and feedback

Track B: Increasing Personal Understanding of Practice Financials
Speaker: Jessica Molina, CVPM, PHR, CCFP
Increasing Personal Understanding of Practice Financials
Wondering how to help your team understand the financial picture of the veterinary practice? Start by getting personal! Believe it or not, leading your team through the process of understanding and managing their own personal finances is a key step toward helping them apply this knowledge to the practice's financial profile. Notable similarities will lead to a greater understanding of budget planning, reading profit and loss statements, and making financial projections. By attending this program, you will learn to communicate finances at a level that will be a win-win for your employees' own checkbook and your practice's financial success.

Track C: Managing Up and Growing Your Career in Veterinary Leadership 
Speaker: Melissa Cary, CVPM
In this session, Melissa will address some key ways you can show your value and expand your leadership role in your practice. Specifically, she will focus on the following:

• Delegation – when and how to delegate (it’s sooner than you think!)
• Growing team leads and lower-level managers
• How to step away from a more hands-on role
• Balancing your time and getting things done
• Asking for and getting more responsibility
• Leadership is lonely, and how to deal
• Transitioning from peer to boss

Track D: Give'em a Break! How to Support Busy Teams without Breaking the Bank
Speaker: Ingrid Pyka, DVM Cert VMI
With team burnout reaching critical levels (especially in ER), learn what upsets them the most and simple tricks that can make your team feel appreciated, and lower their stress, while still supporting patient care needs.

Overcoming Chronic Issues to Drive Success
Speaker: Jessica Johnson
Today’s veterinary organizations are confronted with new and existing challenges that get in the way of delivering business success. In this session, we’ll discuss a method for addressing chronic problems in your organization, how to get to the root cause(s), and a process for reimagining your practice with a design that achieves the results you expect. We will share real-world examples of practices who have used this method and toolkit and give you application opportunity to your unique situation.

The Cost of Our Choices – When Short-term Decisions Impact Long-term Behaviors
Speaker: Senani Ratnayake, BSc, RVT
The last few years have required a significant amount of quick thinking and constant change for our teams and businesses to survive. Often, a necessary decision to support a need in one part of the business can be detrimental to another aspect of the organization. Therefore, we must be strategic with our decision-making, even when we cannot control everything. In this session, we will contrast our reality with our ideal regarding how we want pet owners to feel about us, engage with us, and perceive our value. We will explore how our decision-making is directly reflected in client perception and behavior so that we can make better choices and get back on track with the reality we want!

Session Objectives

1. Consider the ideal client and team perception of value and perception of the practice generally.
2. Evaluate how you have framed your reality to your clients and whether the narrative is helpful or hurtful in achieving your ideal.
3. Make short-term strategic decisions that either positively impact your longer-term goals or can be managed in the short term so as not to influence future outcomes negatively.

Track A: Leadership and Legal Compliance: Manage Your Team Effectively and Legally
Speaker: Timothy A. Davis
Managing a workplace is a juggling act of ensuring productivity, culture, and compliance with employment laws. Few businesses realize the direct link between all three, or how to keep that link strong through best practices. This program will explore all three aspects of leading your practice, and provide critical guidance and tools your practice can implement to reduce challenges and risk.  

This informative program will be presented by Attorney Timothy A. Davis, whose legal practice concentrates on labor and employment law from a management perspective. Tim is recognized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a “Top Ranked Labor & Employment Lawyer,” by Ingram’s as a “Best Lawyer” and by LRI as one of the “Top Labor Lawyers in America.”

Track B: The Trauma-Informed Care Framework – A Key to Sustaining Compassion and Offering High-Quality Care in Veterinary Practices
Speaker: Sonja A. Olson, DVM
Veterinary practices are spaces of deeply meaningful work, professional development and growth, and positive impact on the lives of animals and the humans that care for them. But equally, there are high emotions, work-related stress, and the potential for secondary traumatic stress. The key to fortifying a sustainably healthy, engaged caregiving team and leadership is acknowledging these challenges and cultivating protective factors and skills building. 

Becoming Trauma-Informed normalizes the experiences of individuals in stressful environments and provides an understanding of how to be better prepared as individuals and as teams.
The (6) pillars of this framework include: 

• Safety (including psychological safety)
• Trustworthiness/transparency
• Peer support
• Collaboration/mutuality
• Empowerment/voice/choice
• Cultural competency. 

Track C: A Tale of Two Practices: A Pact to Rethink Hospital Operations
Speakers: Jon Cunnington, MBA, CVPM, and Jake Waas, CVPM
Sometimes you need to step away from a practice in order to focus on it. That was exactly the case for two hospital administrative leaders who attended the 2023 VHMA Management Exchange.

“There are just not enough hours in the day!” In this session we will explore a variety of ways that veterinary business managers have taken control of their time to not just work “IN the business, but ON the business.” From bullet journals to artificial intelligence, we’ll delve into all the tools in our box and how to use them. While our focus will be the application of these technologies in the emergency and specialty medicine management space, they are applicable to any type of practice.

Track A: HR Hacks:  Demystify and Tackle Human Resources in Your Small Business
Speaker: Lori Kleiman, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
Human Resources doesn't have to be mysterious in a small office. Leaders know compliance and employee management are essential – but who has the time? The typical veterinarian and manager are doing all they can to keep customers coming in the door and profits on the bottom line. This interactive program will walk practice leaders through the major issues that can cripple the long-term growth of all organizations. Depending on the audience's needs, the program will focus on recruiting, performance management, training, and technology. This program gives you the information you need to stay in compliance and implement changes that will transform your business. Walk away with tools you can use tomorrow!

Learning objectives:
•    What laws do you need to be aware of, and how do you stay on top of them
•    How do you know if you're paying people properly?
•    How do you successfully recruit the right employees?
•    Can technology take some of the admin off your plate?
•    Should I outsource the HR function?

Track B: Take Charge of the New Normal: Using Technology to Tackle Staffing Shortfalls
Speaker: Brittany Yost, CVPM and Josephine Wynn
Is your team feeling the pressure from being short-staffed? Dealing with hiring and retention issues has been a constant battle. But you can still win. By using valuable data and resources, you and your team can fight back and minimize the impact of staffing challenges.
 
During this session, Brittany and Josephine, will help you discover how data and technology can take on new roles and fill in the gaps for your staff. You will discover how to create efficient workflows, drastically lessen your team’s workload, and assist your staff more than ever. You and your team will be equipped with the tools you need to battle against staffing shortages and come out on top.

Track C: Conflict Resolution
Speaker: Kathleen Logan, MS, MA
Conflicts and disagreements are inevitable in any business. They are neither good nor bad; how people choose to deal with them, however, can make the situation better or worse. Objectives for this session: 

• Learn about conflict without being in one
• Identify potential value of conflict as well as cost of not dealing with it
• Recognize symptoms of small, medium, and large conflicts, and when action is required
• Understand the variety of methods to resolve conflict and which are most likely to be useful in a situation
• Leave with a step-by-step practical guide for resolving conflict 

Track D: Referral Marketing – Strategies to Stand Out
Speaker: Emily Fink
In the growing and ever-changing field of specialty and emergency veterinary medicine, primary care veterinarians have many choices when referring patients. How does your hospital stand out? This program will explore how different types of marketing (including digital, relationship, event, B2B vs. B2C, and more) can be utilized to build and maintain strong relationships and, therefore, referrals. Session discussion will include common pain points in the referral experience and ideas about how to alleviate them. Participants will leave the session with examples of best practices, strategies, and practical tools to aid your marketing.

Learning Objectives:

• An understanding of the diverse types of marketing opportunities (B2B, B2C, digital, print, events, relationships, etc.)
• An understanding of best practices
• Examples of practical digital tools to aid in marketing
• An understanding of common issues in the referral process and ideas about how to alleviate them 

Strategies for Defining Your Competitive Advantage and Delighting Your Customers
Speaker: Michael Johnson
One does not usually use the word "delight" when striving to develop a sustainable customer strategy, but in this session, you will learn to do just that. We will also examine ways to drive customer loyalty and increase your customer base.

During this fun and insightful discussion, you gain insights into crafting YOUR formidable customer strategy and developing specific strategies and tactics that you can use as a veterinary practice to stand out and gain a competitive advantage.

To do so, we will take delve into these thought-provoking topics:

• Understanding What Pet Consumers Want Today and Where Veterinary Wins.
• Where is Your Blue Ocean? Competing on Your Strengths.
• Experience is Everything - Do You Provide Delight?

The Economic State of the Veterinary Profession
Speaker: Clinton O'Neill
AVMA economist walks through key changes in the macro environment and contextualizes the changes on the horizon and challenges of the veterinary profession with other sectors of the economy.

Don’t Get Stuck: Leveraging Brain Science to Be More Productive
Speaker: Melina Palmer
You know how inspired you feel after reading a new book, listening to a podcast episode, or attending a thought-provoking conference? If you've ever planned to implement it all "on Monday" -- but quickly fallen back into your old way of doing things (and want that cycle to change!) this session is for you. Applied behavioral economist, Melina Palmer, will share four natural tendencies of the brain: optimism bias, planning fallacy, bike shedding, and time discounting that combine with our love of the status quo so you understand why your brain is wired to keep you from doing everything you plan -- and the one thing you can do immediately after this session to get the most from the whole conference. Don't miss this one!