Weekly Veterinary Industry Review #11

 

It’s Friday, October 9th, 2020. Welcome to round eleven of the Weekly Veterinary Industry Review, brought to you by GeniusVets. This week we discuss a cutting edge hybrid veterinary conference, a pig patient that inspired one vet’s move to embrace Telehealth, and some unfortunate but relevant pandemic side effects we should all be aware of in our pets. So let's get to it…

 

 

Veterinary Business News

Keeping you at the forefront of veterinary news regarding products, personnel, and conferences...

Merit Award-Winning Hospital For in Hospital Design is a Must-See

  • Not everyone wants or needs a new veterinary space but, when Dr. Lonsford of Deer Park Animal Hospital had his daughter join their booming practice, a bigger space became necessary.
  • As long as they had to make the move, they knew to make the most of it, asking the employees what they wished for—patient care and comfort, client convenience and appreciation, staff comfort, and clinical efficiency.
  • With a circular reception desk, an enormous, airy vestibule, and stunning earth tones, it’s no wonder this clinic won the award in dvm360’s Hospital Design Competition.
  • From the article: “In 2015, Dr. Lonsford learned this key piece of advice at a veterinary conference: One way to figure out how big your hospital should be is to build so that your mortgage will cost you about 7% of your gross income. But you also need to factor in growth that will come with a new practice, so he was advised to build to 10% to 15% of his gross income to start with, assuming that within 5 years of growth that number would come back down to 7%.”
  • Article Posted By dvm360

 

VMX 2021 Veterinary Meeting and Expo Has Been Announced

  • While most conferences have been remote as of late due to the pandemic, this event - being held from January 16-20 - will be a hybrid conference.
  • This NAVC event takes place in Orlando, Florida, but guests can attend virtually as well.
  • As the Chief Veterinary Officer of NAVA, Dr. Dana Varble, noted during her Webinar Wednesday with GeniusVets, “We’re focusing on our biggest, our bread and butter, the stuff folks come in for. Surgery, medicine, but we decided to make a very concerted effort to keep things like our exotics education, education for our mixed animal practitioners, and our farm animal practitioners, include some subject matter from one health, include some subject matter from rehab, and some wholistic education. Stuff that maybe you don't come again, maybe you're not going to come and sit through 20 hours of it, but maybe you want to sit through an hour of Zoom medicine just to hear what your colleagues are doing…”
  • Article Posted By NAVC

 

The AAHA Career Center Has Been Revamped

  • This hub is the most efficient way to put AAHA-accredited practices in touch with qualified professionals in the veterinary field.
  • From the article: “This new mobile-responsive platform and single sign-on functionality make accessing the career center effortless. AAHA members gain exposure to job seekers via YM Careers’ network of nearly 1,000 career center sites and a biweekly email that automatically distributes job vacancies to active job seekers. Members also have access to the anonymous resume bank of qualified candidates, putting employers in control of finding quality talent.”
  • Article Posted By AAHA

 

How a Potbellied Pig Inspired One Veterinarian to Embrace Telehealth

  • In 2015, the owner of a 200-pound potbellied pig used three wooden planks to coax the pig out of the truck to see practice owner and DVM Crista Wallis.
  • It was on this day that Wallis decided to embrace the world of Telehealth. From the article: “The pig had a bad leg, and trying to get that pig back into the car was like a circus show,” recalled Dr. Wallis. “That was the day I said, ‘Enough!’ I could do that case remotely without having her transport a 200-pound pig.”
  • Wallis came up with a list that she believes all DVMs should look for in Telehealth apps: easy transactions, multiple communication options, easily customizable, hospital branding, great customer service, PIMS integration, record-keeping, and ease of use.
  • Article Posted by Today’s Veterinary Business

 

Valuable Pet News For Your Clients

Topical stories your clients will want to hear...

Veterinary Behaviorist Warns That the Pandemic is Making Some Pets Long For Social Distance!

  • Dr. Stephanie Borns-Weil, a veterinary behaviorist at The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, says pet owners should look for subtle signs of stress and give them space, as the pandemic has caused them to lose their “decompression times.”
  • The video in the article also talks about the importance of pet owners doing their due diligence on the pets they adopt, as the needs of a guinea pig are going to vary greatly from those of a dog, and dogs’ needs vary greatly from breed to breed.
  • The article suggests looking for these signs of stress in your dog: rapidly blinking eyes, aversion to attention and hiding, licking their lips, repeated yawning, growling, and stiffened body language.
  • As we’ve discussed during other industry reviews, Dr. Borns-Weil noted that there has been a recent uptick in dog bites.
  • Article Posted By WCVB.com

 

Obesity is Another Unfortunate Side Effect in Our Pets During the Pandemic

  • Lindsey E. Bullen, DVM, Diplomate ACVN, a veterinary nutritionist with BluePearl, notes that the causes for this are overfeeding due to being home more and lack of exercise.
  • From the article: “‘People are spending more time at home with their pets, which makes overfeeding and overtreating a greater possibility,’ she says. ‘Owners who are more likely to get up and move may be taking on more of an active role regarding their pet’s activity levels. This means more walks and playtime.’”
  • Another possible factor, Bullen notes, is people are having difficulty striking that work-life balance and are, thus, giving treats out of guilt.
  • The article gives some helpful tips to avoid this pitfall, such as not giving in to begging, avoiding giving human food, using a digital scale, and more.
  • Article Posted by Veterinary Practice News

 

Not-So-Human-Interest

Lighter pet stories to provide much-needed cheer in difficult times...

“Feisty” Miracle Lion Cub Survives California Wildfires

  • If you’re new to our weekly industry review, you might not know that we like to end each week with a feel-good story that has all the warm fuzzies we need right now, and this story of a rescued lion cub has all of that.
  • A firefighter found the cub while fighting the fires, and the cub was taken to a rescue facility and then transferred to the Oakland Zoo. A spokesperson for the zoo said it was a “miracle” the cub survived while Wildlife Biologist Pete Figura called the cub “alert and feisty”, saying those were good signs.
  • From the article: “On Thursday, x-rays were taken to check the cub's lungs for any damage caused by smoke inhalation or if the animal had any broken bones. Results from the x-rays showed that the cub was fine but had significant damage to the soft tissue of his paws as well as irritation in his eyes…”
  • Article Posted By PEOPLE

Have something newsworthy in the veterinary field? Reach out to us at [email protected]. Enjoy our weekly veterinary industry review, coming to you each Friday afternoon.