How to run your practice as smoothly as a Rolodex

2 mins

Hands up if you agree with the following:

“It’s not how much time you spend on what you love. It’s how little time you spend on what you hate.”

You love your job, and you put all your energy and passion into it, and yet there are always little things that get in the way you can’t control.

Time is precious; it passes by, and you don’t know how much of it you have. In your practice, time is always scarce. Your diary may run efficiently, but a lack of time can quickly upset the rest of the day when something unexpected happens. A single late pet owner can cause your consultation hour to overrun and cause a significant time squeeze.

Experiencing too little time can give a feeling of pressure and stress. Still, you can do something about it – by spending less time on things that could be done faster, more efficiently, or even automatically.

Let the ‘practice’ work for you.

Of course, your focus is on the patient, and you shouldn’t rush a patient examination or a pet owner conversation; they deserve your time and attention. However, you can save time by using a good strategy and products that work for you. If you are looking for a fun topic to discuss over lunch, ask your colleagues how to develop an X-ray manually or drop the word “Rolodex”. You’ll see that you automatically end up on the topic of ‘time’ and how easy and fun work is these days.

To save you a Google search, a Rolodex (a combination of ‘rolling’ and ‘index’) is a device containing rotating cards with contact details handwritten on them. They were used around the time when the practice diary was pen and paper, and laboratory results came in by fax (a kind of printer for WhatsApp!). Colleagues will probably recall that the Rolodex allowed them to find client information relatively quickly, but the diary with its many notes and scribbles quickly became cluttered and that requesting tests was cumbersome compared to today.

Since then, a lot has changed; many tasks and actions are now managed by practice management software such as Animana, which can automate or simplify tedious tasks, such as Animana’s integrations with in-house diagnostics and the IDEXX Reference Laboratories. Using the automation can save 15 minutes or more per test – that’s an average consultation (maybe two), giving you that time back to spend on what you love.