Take a Revenue Bite Back

Help your veterinary practice customers make their investments count by solving three critical problems related to veterinary dental health.

Dentistry is not something that received enough attention for most veterinarians while they were in school. Need proof? Estimates of periodontal disease prevalence can be up to 80%.1 Yet dentistry only occupies, on average, 2-3% of veterinary clinic revenue. Dental calculus is the most common diagnosis in both dogs and cats per the 2019 Banfield State of the Pet Health® Report.2 It is a more common diagnosis than being overweight in both species.2 So why is a pet’s dental health not a more key focus of every clinic visit?

Critical problems

There are three critical problems with veterinarians not focusing on dentistry in their practice. The first is a lack of confidence. Veterinarians were lucky to spend a week on dentistry in school. And in some cases, there were no hands-on training labs, but only lectures, whereas spay and neuter rotations lasted for a minimum of three weeks. There are several prominent board-certified dentists and veterinary technicians that offer CE at many of the major conferences, and some that will even come into a practice to train the veterinarians and their technicians on how to perform comprehensive oral examinations and to use corresponding equipment properly. If you are selling any dental equipment from a hand scaler to a digital dental radiography unit, ensure training is included on how to use the equipment and properly maintain it.

The second problem is having an empowered team around the veterinarian. The AVMA released a study in 2007 that discussed how much credentialed veterinary technicians could contribute to veterinary business revenue. The analysis suggested that the typical veterinarian’s gross income increased by $93,311 for each additional credentialed veterinarian technician per veterinarian in the practice.3 Veterinarians lost control of the pharmacy years ago and additional revenue to low-cost spay/neuter clinics. Dentistry is one portion of their business that cannot be lost with the appropriate team to help them own this space. Imagine seeing your veterinary customer’s revenue up by more than $93,000 per year and increasing their dental revenue from a minuscule 3-30%. What would those increases do to your customer’s bottom line, and yours?

This can only be accomplished with a fully valued and utilized team. It has been shown that technicians that are fully utilized are more likely to stay in a practice. The value of the credentialed veterinary technician is immense and should be celebrated every day and not just one week out of a year.

The financial health of a practice is essential, and many veterinarians try to do it all. But should they? On average, how long does your human physician stay in the room? Five to ten minutes is a long time for our human counterparts. Your customer’s clientele will adapt to less time with the veterinarian in the exam room as they are already preconditioned by human medicine. Empowered technicians can do more for their practices – especially client education. Charging appropriately for each team member’s time, concentrating on the value of the services to clients, and compensating technicians and staff for their impact and additional revenue they bring to the practice would go a long way toward improving the financial health and environment in a practice.

The third problem is talking about dentistry in such a way that it’s not an option or something a pet owner “should” consider. There are a lot of things in today’s culture that we should consider but never get around to doing. So why should a pet owner do anything regarding their pet’s teeth when the veterinarian doesn’t communicate how critical dentistry is to the overall health of the pet?

Mary Berg, RVT, VTS (Dentistry), owner of Beyond the Crown, said veterinarians need to focus on the value of the procedure. “It’s not about the cost of the procedure,” she said. “The true problem is that the pet owner doesn’t understand how the overall health and other organs such as the heart, liver, and kidneys are affected by dental disease.” To further emphasize the focus on oral health as a part of preventative health, “why wait to discuss oral health when you have to remove multiple teeth?” Berg said. “Make a pet’s life better now by discussing oral health at every visit to the clinic.”

Berg recommended removing two terms from, and adding a new term to, your customer’s vocabulary. The first term is “dentals.” She identified dentals as an adjective and not a noun. More importantly, “it means nothing to pet owners who don’t fully comprehend the value of the procedure.” Instead, use the term comprehensive oral health assessment and treatment (COHAT).

The second term to remove is “should.” Instead of telling the pet owner that they should consider a dental for their pet, Berg recommended putting more emphasis on the procedure in a way the client can understand the gravity of what your veterinary customers are asking them to do by prescribing a COHAT.

She also recommended adding the term “infection” instead of periodontal disease. Owners understand infection more tangibly than periodontal disease.

Resources you can bring to your practices

One of Berg’s top tips for resources that sales representatives can bring into a practice is being aware of which veterinary dentists or VTS (Dentistry) offer in-clinic dental continuing education (CE) programs in your region. “Make sure technicians are involved in that training,” she said. “Dentistry is technician driven, so they must be included in the training.”

Further, you can also host a CE event in your region for local hospital veterinary teams. Wet labs on topics such as positioning for dental X-rays and other subjects that require a lot of hands-on experience are very impactful.

While having the most up-to-date equipment can be exciting, offering training and advice on properly maintaining the clinic’s current equipment can go a long way. And not just the expensive equipment, but how to properly use and maintain hand instruments. Knowing which hand instruments can be retipped if damaged or well used can make you a go-to resource for dental equipment.

One of the most critical things Berg said she looks for when evaluating new dental equipment purchases for clients is whether or not that company includes training in the purchase price. Without training, “it will be a costly treadmill that you will not be using as efficiently as possible,” she said. Berg also recommended talking to existing veterinary customers and seeing what their experiences have been with the equipment, including training, ease of use, and customer service for questions and repairs. Having a list of references for new buyers will provide a lot of value to your veterinary customers.

Without dental radiography, Berg said that veterinarians are missing more than 40% of the pathology that is in the oral cavity. In addition to excellent radiography, magnification and lighting are also important. Berg said she can’t stress enough the importance of dental loupes with a headlamp. Loupes can be adjustable and used by multiple staff members, or they can be set for a specific person. Being able to see what you are working on in the mouth is essential.

However, the ergonomics of a workstation are critical to the longevity of everyone. Berg said she personally prefers adjustable surgical tables used only for COHATs instead of surgical tubs specifically for that purpose. Providing input on such functionality as lighting and ergonomics, even if you don’t represent items in that category, will help your customers see that you care about the health and well-being of everyone in that practice.

Resource Checklist:

• Regional CE opportunities
• In-clinic training options
• Equipment maintenance options
• New equipment training
• Magnification options
• Lighting options
• Ergonomic and workspace evaluations

Photo 1 credit – istockphoto.com/everythingpossible

Photo 2 credit – istockphoto.com/ChesiireCat