AAHA Yearly Conference

I love conferences! If I had infinite funds and time, I would attend them all! I listened to a great lecture at the AVMA Conference in 2011 on reptiles even though I have never worked at a hospital that treats them, nor do I personally own any. That is how eagerly geeked out I get about conferences.

I believe that AAHA conferences provide the some of the best quality management CE of any of the conferences. They have tons of management and tremendous speakers.

This year AAHA was conveniently located in Phoenix where I have an apartment (It's a long story). This meant the cost of the conference and the gasoline to fill my truck was about the extent of my investment. You can't improve on that.

So, some highlights:

Veterinarians are terrible about looking at and examining our finacials. Pay attention to trends on your financials. Examine your different revenue centers for winners and losers. "Money is emotional" so we need to divest ourselves of that baggage when we look at it.

In Touch Practice Communications with Jessica Vogelsong (pawcurious.com): Great tips on engaging pet owners through social media - ask questions, post contests, join forces with local media (radio) to assemble a pet video collection. In-hospital photos of pets (don't forget your release forms!) Tell them that you are posting the picture.

This talk had tremendous value and great suggestions. If you see her name on any conference that you're attending, I strongly suggest you listen to her. I am a note taker, and I filled three pages on her talk alone.

Other tips and tricks from the conference (bear with me, I'm still in that giddy, "Lets change the world!" post conference high).

Don't use the following words: basically (offends the listener), appointment (you avoid appointments, but you like to visit), Office policy (this is cold and shows a lack of ownership, use 'we believe' instead), use can instead of can't. Always try to create a positive outcome.

Before and after pictures for dentals (yep, they're still talking about it, and you're probably still not doing it). You don't even have to buy a camera. Use a cell phone, email the pictures to the clinic email and assemble them in Word. It takes 10 minutes.

Google+, which almost no one uses and no one is on and is ultimately largely useless, is Google's baby, and they will reward your site with higher visibility if you use it. So use it and link your site and blog and FB page to it as well.

People engage with veterinarians on FB, but we're not there, and when we are there, we don't post enough. Post often, post photos (which are high value) vs links (which are low).

Veterinarians who are otherwise evidence based still believe that their clients are all about price. They are not. Staff is usually more price sensitive than clients. Clients rarely have any clue what anything costs year in and year out, staff does, and they 'marry' that price.

Sx should be at minimum $500 an hour - yeah, chew on that one!.

Here's a partial list of speakers who I listened to: Debbie Boone, Bill Schroeder, Jan Bellows and Paul Camilo, Marsh Heinke, Darren Osborne, Dr. Demian Dressler.