Alan Robinson has been a veterinary surgeon in practice for 20+ years, a successful business consultant for 18 years to over 600 practices and a director of Vet Dynamics.  His mission is helping independent practice owners improve performance and quality of life in practice.

No one in vet practice will have been unchallenged during 2020/2021, but after the tumultuous and stressful first lockdown, when life started to return to a ‘new normal’, there has been a spike in profitability recorded by many vet businesses.  There are several reasons for this; an uptick in pet ownership, clients at home spending more time with their pets, some staffing – or staff costs – reduced, adoption of new technology, and for many an opportunity (or even necessity) to be more choosy about their clients, finally ditching some of those bad debtors who take up time but don’t pay.  But that has come at a cost.  Your team may be exhausted and there is the challenge of bring teams back together.  Practice managers, clinical directors and owners may also have found they have been short of ‘head space’ in the past year and as a result their long term to do lists have grown.  Now could be the time to step back and assess what changes have been good and should be kept, what needs to go and how to use this massive disruption to ‘business as usual’ to bring about lasting business benefits.