Covetrus^® Connected Care Podcast

In this episode, Dr. Lori Teller answers practitioners' most pressing questions on the present and future of veterinary medicine. Dr. Teller, past President of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and Clinical Professor of Telehealth at Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine, offers expert advice on:

• Workforce issues
• Diversity in veterinary medicine
• Telemedicine
• Artificial intelligence
• Practice technology

If you’re curious about trends involving today’s top-of-mind issues and opportunities, then this episode is not to be missed.

Resources

Dr. Lori Teller

Journey for Teams

MentorVet Connect

In this episode of Covetrus^® Connected Care, Jonathan Wainberg, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Pet at CareCredit^®, a Synchrony solution, shares helpful tools and integrated solutions that veterinarians can offer and use to support pet parents when unexpected costs arise. Wainberg also shares research on client communication, done in partnership with the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), outlining how veterinary staff can more effectively talk about pet care costs.

Resources

Communicating with clients: Using the right language to improve care | American Veterinary Medical Association (avma.org)

Lifetime of Care Study

CareCredit

This episode dives into the latest research on the emerging role of the human-animal bond on the well-being of veterans, children with autism, and hospital staff. Dr. O'Haire describes how:

• Service animals can complement traditional PTSD therapy for veterans by reducing PTSD symptoms and panic attacks and normalizing stress-hormone levels
• Children with autism demonstrated more social behaviors and less "anxious activation" when paired with service animals
• Hospital staff who were experiencing stress and burnout reported greater feelings of accomplishment at work and less desire to switch jobs with a facility-dog program

Dr. O'Haire also touches on the important work Covetrus^® is supporting so that service dogs get the preventive care they need to live long, healthy lives.

Find out more about Dr. O'Haire:
https://vetmed.arizona.edu/person/maggie-ohaire-phd

Our guest, Angie Arora, MSW, RSW, offers practical solutions to help practices foster psychologically healthy and safe workplaces. Angie is a Veterinary Social Worker, Well-being Coach and Certified Compassion Fatigue Specialist. She specializes in veterinary well-being, end-of-life and pet loss support, and equity issues in veterinary medicine.

Angie outlines the conditions and environment that give rise to burnout and poor mental well-being in veterinary medicine. And she shares strategies and practical tools to positively support employees’ psychological well-being in the workplace.

Find Angie at www.angiearora.com and on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Watch podcast outtakes on YouTube: Covetrus^® Connected Care

Follow Covetrus on LinkedIn

In this episode of Covetrus^® Connected Care, Salois makes sense of the real-life reality behind the numbers — normalizing visits, high turnover and burnout. For practices looking to tackle today's challenges, Salois cautions against investing solely in a bigger pipeline of veterinary talent. With a deeply knowledgeable and optimistic outlook, he offers concrete steps to begin to remedy systemic issues, such as turnover, low productivity and poor mental health among veterinary practitioners.

The ultimate goal? To help practices achieve a more sustainable business model, connect more deeply as a workforce and with clients, and improve animal health.

Resources

Veterinary Management Groups

Matt Salois

Our guest is Eric Garcia*, an internationally recognized digital and information technology strategist who works exclusively with veterinary practices. An award-winning speaker, Eric was recognized as Speaker of the Year by VMX in 2020.

In this episode, Eric guides us through the current state of the industry. To meet today’s demands and prep for the future, he encourages practices to consider technological changes before hiring.

“I always tell practices that before you look at adding more bodies into your practice, look and see what you can do to make your practice more efficient, to make sure that you're using the right technology,” Eric says in the episode.

He also offers three practical steps to help team members to be more accepting of new technologies — so you can take advantage of today's opportunities.

Additional information:

How to market your online pharmacy

Maximizing online veterinary pharmacy traffic and sales

Study reveals new technology that saves time, provides relief to overworked, understaffed veterinary practices

eVetPractice Veterinary Practice Management Software has evolved to Covetrus Pulse^TM

But what is a vOS? And, importantly, amid today’s demands, how has the Pulse technology improved the lives of veterinary practitioners and the animals they care for?

In this episode, Benny Estes, Director of Product Management at Covetrus, shares real-world insights gleaned from the practices that have been using Pulse. He describes how Pulse helps address many of today’s pain points in veterinary medicine, including:

• Workloads
• Inefficiency
• Low Morale
• Work-Life Balance

Whether you’re a practice owner, doctor or veterinary technician, this episode is full of actionable learnings gained from veterinary professionals just like you.

Additional information:

Study Reveals New Covetrus Technology Saves Time, Provides Relief to Overworked, Understaffed Veterinary Practices

Newday Veterinary Care chooses Covetrus Pulse as veterinary operating system

In this episode, Dr. Karen Felsted, a veterinary industry thought leader, explains why care plans are good for animal health and a practice’s bottom line. Dr. Felsted is the former CEO of the National Commission on Veterinary Economic Issues and served on the research team for several major veterinary industry studies, including the Bayer Veterinary Care Usage Study.

Drawing on research and decades of experience, Dr. Felsted answers veterinarians’ most pressing questions about care plans, debunking common misconceptions about the plans. She emphasizes the role technology plays in modern care plans, and the appeal of care plans to Millennials. She also shares the most effective steps to add customizable plans for preventive care, chronic care and dentistry to your practice flow.

Additional information:

Dr. Karen Felsted, MS, CVPM, CPA

Episode 6 of the Covetrus® Connected Care podcast explores proven, no-nonsense strategies to:

• Uncover and understand areas of inefficiency in your veterinary practice
• Streamline workflows without changing how you practice veterinary medicine
• Tap into technology to recapture precious minutes and grow revenue and relationships

The episode features Dr. Link Welborn, Chief Veterinary Officer for Covetrus in North America and the owner of 6 AAHA-accredited hospitals in Tampa, Florida, and Stephanie Foster, Director of Customer Education at Covetrus.

A recent American Veterinary Medical Association study found that highly efficient practices saw 75% more patients per veterinarian than less efficient ones. If you’re looking to level up your practice’s efficiency, see more patients and increase revenue, then this episode is a must-listen.

Sources:

• Study explores secrets of highly efficient veterinary practices. AVMA. October 26, 2022
• Covetrus study shows benefits of new technology. DVM360. July 27, 2022

In this episode of Covetrus^® Connected Care, we talk with Wendy Toth, publisher of Great Pet Care, an educational site for pet parents that’s part of Covetrus, and Dr. Hanie Elfenbein, an emergency services veterinarian and frequent contributor to Great Pet Care.*

Because pet parents are going online to look up symptoms or research an illness — either before, after or even during their vet clinic visit — Dr. Elfenbein says the information they find there should be reliable and understandable to the average animal lover.

“I think it's important to be able to really meet those pet parents where they're at for both the health of the animal and for the compliance of recommendations,” Dr. Elfenbein says. “With content like Great Pet Care, I can be confident that well-researched informative information is available as a reliable resource for pet parents.”

Visit Great Pet Care

Are you a veterinarian interested in writing for Great Pet Care? Click here to apply.

Additional information:

• Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association. More pet owners are shopping online. July 28, 2021.
• Hanie Elfenbein, DVM
• Wendy Toth, VP of Content/Publisher of Great Pet Care

*Wendy Toth is a Covetrus employee and Dr. Elfenbein is a paid contributor to Great Pet Care.

Since then, the AVMA, professional organizations, colleges and companies like Covetrus^® have worked to support hands-on veterinary pharmacy education in pharmacy schools.

Our guest in this episode is Dr. Jennifer O’Grady, Covetrus Vice President of Quality and Regulatory Affairs and Pharmacist-in-Charge, who created the Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) curriculum. The goal of the curriculum is to help pharmacists to better understand animal health. Today, Covetrus offers preceptor sites for five veterinary APPE programs at the following educational institutions:

• University of New England
• Creighton University
• University of Nebraska Medical Center
• Texas Southern University
• Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

Learn more:

• Covetrus Announces $120K in Scholarships to Support Diversity in Veterinary Sector
• UNE College of Pharmacy partners with Covetrus to offer students hands-on learning experience

n this episode of Covetrus^® Connected Care, Salois draws on his extensive industry knowledge to walk us through the latest data on pet-care demand, supply, and veterinary employment and productivity.

Salois makes sense of the real-life reality behind the numbers — normalizing visits, high turnover and burnout. For practices looking to tackle today’s challenges, Salois cautions against investing soley in a bigger pipeline of veterinary talent. With a deeply knowledgeable and optimistic outlook, he offers concrete steps to begin to remedy systemic issues, such as turnover, low productivity and poor mental health among veterinary practitioners.

The ultimate goal? To help practices achieve a more sustainable business model, connect more deeply as a workforce and with clients, and improve animal health.

Resources:

• Veterinary Study Groups
• Matt Salois

In this episode, Dena Barlow, a former veterinary technician and current Senior Technical Marketing Specialist at Covetrus, describes a new exclusive partnership between Covetrus^® Compounding (Roadrunner Pharmacy and Atlas Pharmaceuticals) and Fear Free^®. The partnership aims to reduce visit-related fear, anxiety and stress for pets — and everyone involved in their care — while also increasing compliance and improving pet health.

The goal of the partnership is to empower veterinary practices with:

• Tailored medications to enhance the health and well-being of pets
• Easy-to-use tools to automate ordering of dose forms and flavors
• Fewer steps in the ordering process to save time

Rather than being one-size-fits-all, compounded medications can be customized to help the veterinarian and pet parent administer the medicine in the dose forms and flavoring options the pet likes.

As Dena explains, "At Roadrunner and Atlas, we believe the world will be a better place when we treat each animal with individual empathy and remove the unnecessary anxiety from animal healthcare. We want to evolve to bring personalized care and animal-friendly medicine — for veterinarians and pet parents alike.”

Learn more:

• Covetrus Compounding
• Fear Free

¹Becker, M., Radosta, L., Sung, W., Becker, M. (2018). From Fearful to Fear Free: A positive Program to Free Your Dog from Anxiety, Fears, and Phobias. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc.

If you’re curious about technology, how do you choose one that will support your clinic’s goals for the long term?

In the first episode of Covetrus® Connected Care, Ying Chen, Chief Customer Officer, Product at Covetrus, outlines practical, easy-to-follow steps to find value in technology. For example, she suggests starting with certain technologies, which she calls “small t” technologies, rather than others.

These animals aid in so many ways, yet the cost of veterinary care may prove unaffordable for the families that adopt assistance canines after their years of service are over. Now, a new initiative aims to close the care gap with service animal care plans.

Our guest, Nick Braukhoff, is a volunteer firefighter and software manager at Covetrus. He’ll talk about the types of service animals that might benefit from these plans and how the plans enable local clinics to do good in their community, while fostering stronger bonds with pet parents.

Find out more about the pilot program by emailing serviceanimals@vcp.vet.

Please like, subscribe and review the show wherever you listen — it helps new listeners find us!

Have feedback? Email nicole.knight@covetrus.com.

How can practices proactively address this enduring problem — beyond raising awareness of the issue during Pet Dental Health Month. What role can technology and veterinary innovation play each and every day to help solve this health problem?

In this episode, we chat with Michelle St. Mary, Director of Utilization and Coaching at VCP, about dental care plans and dental options as a means to improve oral health care. As it turns out, 65% of VCP-supported plans include dental, making the plans a significant driver of dental compliance.

Learn more at vcp.vet

Could technology provide a path forward? In this episode, Georgia Wraight, EVP and president of Global Technology Solutions at Covetrus, tells us about a new, complete solution called Covetrus Pulse.

The recently announced technology brings all of your software applications into a single, seamless veterinary operating system, letting practice teams focus on what matters most — caring for pet patients and building client relationships.

Find out more about Covetrus Pulse at cvet.co/pulse.

In this episode, Dr. Doug Kenney, author and host of the Pet Insurance Guide Podcast, outlines the value of pet insurance and pitfalls to avoid. We also explore the intersection of wellness plans and pet insurance and how the two services can work hand in hand in your practice.

Wellness Plans

Chronic Illness Plans

Pet Insurance Guide Podcast

Wellness, Dental, Chronic Disease Plans Make Pet Healthcare Affordable - Veterinary Care Plans (VCP) - Episode 67

Coming innovations to this technological backbone will give vets and their staff new tools to work more efficiently and achieve better clinical and business outcomes. In this episode, Sara Swenson of Covetrus provides us with a sneak peek into the future of practice management software at Covetrus. She also describes the differences between wellness modules and VCP's platform and reveals when VCP will be integrated with AVImark, eVetPractice, and ImproMed.

Practice Manager Miranda Schroeder shares their blueprint for wellness plan success, such as involving employees early on and building a culture of wellness. She explains that VCP's customization capability proved instrumental to help them truly tailor preventive care plans to each pet to show value — while providing appropriate doctor-recommended care.

Donny explains how the device, which has GPS and many other features, helps position veterinarians as trusted advisors — to build loyalty and set the practice apart from the competition. This episode is a must-listen for veterinary professionals curious about the intersection of "big" data and pet wellness.

Find out more about Link. Visit the VCP Talk show page.

Our wide-ranging conversation covers the business aspects of wellness plans, innovative new thinking around chronic care plans, and program applications. We talk about wellness plan benefits — namely providing better care and increasing revenue both in-plan and out-of-plan, all while driving client loyalty.

You can find Dr. Felsted at PantheraT.com and learn more about VCP at here. Visit our show page.

Now, that education can include genetic information about each cat's unique makeup. This knowledge can not only improve cat health, but also can foster stronger client relationships and increased revenue for veterinary practices.

In this episode, we chat with Dr. Kash Kuruppu of Basepaws about feline DNA tests for oral health and overall health. She describes how the results of the Basepaws test typically lead to immediate action in 15% of adult cats, 1 in 5 senior cats, and 2 in 5 geriatric cats. This translates to increased visits and increased treatment, and greater trust between the pet owner and doctor.

Find out more about VCP. Learn about feline DNA testing by going here.

In this episode, we chat with Lauren Thorne of Neogen about the ideal candidates for canine DNA testing and how the test is a natural fit for wellness and treatment plans.

Learn more about the test and Neogen here.

But what are other complementary strategies to cultivate loyalty? Today our guest, Dr. Stacee Santi, shares impactful ideas on generating loyalty and growing compliance and revenue at your animal hospital.

But are these stories TRUE? VCP's Bob Richardson and Ron Nelson, along with host Nicole Knight, get to the truth about the six most common myths. Find out the six myths — and whether they're true or not — in this informative episode!