Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker joins Dr. Andy Roark to talk about the idea of “intentional discounting.” What happens when veterinarians are able to openly discount (or even give away) services to pet owners in need? Let’s get into it!
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LINKS
Dr. Crocker’s Homepage: www.drcrockerpetvet.com
Uncharted Veterinary Conference – April 20-22, 2023: https://unchartedvet.com/uvc-april-2023/
Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker is a 2009 graduate from the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine. She is passionate about mentorship and empowering veterinary professionals to embrace the profession and find joy and success. Growing up Dr. Crocker competed on horses and was inspired to become a veterinarian. Since graduation she has worked as an equine ambulatory vet, small animal general practitioner, and emergency veterinarian. She currently lives in Texas with her spirited 10 year old daughter, funny 6 year old son, and supportive husband of 16 years.
She works as an ER Veterinarian for Veterinary Emergency Group in Dallas, TX. Recently she was excited to purchase Alta Vista Animal Hospital in Fort Worth, TX. She plans to continue her support of fellow veterinary professionals, both virtually and in person through her various endeavors.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This podcast transcript is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Banfield Pet Hospital, which is striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity across the veterinary profession. Click here to learn more about Equity, Inclusion & Diversity at Banfield.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome everybody to The Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I’m here with my friend Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker. This is a good episode. It’s going to roil some people up, though, there is definitely some interesting conversation and ideas here. We’re talking about discounting and vets discounting. And you guys can hear me asking the questions that I’m struggling with as we go through this interview. I like a lot of where this goes, and I end with questions of how does this scale? It’s really an interesting conversation. If you think about discounting in your practice or what that looks like, this is a really good conversation.
There’s a lot of interface here with spectrum of care. There’s a lot of interface here with keeping care affordable. There’s a lot of interface with Dr. Autonomy, meeting the mission and values of staff, all that stuff is here. And also, we got to run healthy, profitable businesses where we can set budgets and do strategic planning and pay for equipment and raises and continuing education and things like that. And so a lot of nuance in this conversation. Anyway, I’m going to stop talking about it. You guys should check it out, Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(Singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker. How are you?
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
I’m good. A little tired, but I’m excited to be here.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I know. You should not have done this podcast. You should have just been like, “I’m sorry, I’m working until the butt crack of dawn, and then I don’t have enough time to sleep and then talk to you.” You should have said that.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
If I do that though, I would never get anything done, because that’s the ER life. So I’m excited to be here. It’ll be fun.
Dr. Andy Roark:
For those who don’t know, you are a practicing emergency veterinarian, and you are a big presence on social media. And I think the world of you. I have really enjoyed getting to know you over the last year or two, and I love that you’re a positive voice for veterinary medicine. I like the stuff you do. When there’s so much negativity on social media, I like it. I like that you tell the truth about what it means to be a veterinarian and also emphasize the positive. I just think that’s a perspective that is valuable for people to hear, and just be reminded that we do cool stuff. So thank you for that.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
I started this whole thing because of that, so I’m glad it actually resonates and works. And I hear that a lot, where people say, “I had a hard shift or I had a hard day. Thanks for sharing.” But then also reminding me of all the very cool, very amazing things we do. So it-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, there’s a lot of people on social media and there’s a lot of people in vet medicine on social media. I don’t think that there are a whole lot of people, and I’m going to get blown up for this, but I think there’s space for more people to be honest about what medicine is, and talk about what they enjoy about it and what makes it good and what’s fun. Or look at it honestly and find the ability to laugh.
I think that’s what I’ve always tried to aspire to, it’s not toxic positivity. It’s not pretending that every day is great. It’s not telling people, “You should just smile.” But it’s being honest and saying, “No, this is a hard job, and there are some really good things here. And let’s sit with them for a second. Let’s look at them. Let’s pull them out. Let’s laugh about the hard parts together.” And I think that that’s so valuable and just… I don’t know. I don’t see a whole lot… I feel like social media has kind of drifted away from that in a lot of ways. And so it’s just, those people out there who are putting that positivity on I think are really important.
Well, you’ve got a talk coming up. You’re speaking at Western Vet Conference in Las Vegas in a couple of months, and I will see you out there. But you’re talking about something that I’ve really been interested in for a long time. And so we’re talking about discounting. And I think a lot about discounting, and the fact that as a doctor, I am often in the exam room talking to people about money, and some people can’t pay for the care that they need to have.
I feel like there’s been a lot of evolution this way in our profession, but when I came up, it was not uncommon for vets to change the prices, and just be like, “Oh, hey, ear cytology, it suddenly costs half of what it usually costs.” And they would just do that, and it was normalized. And I know people who would slam their fists on the table desk and say, “That’s embezzlement.” It was common practice back in the day of discounting prices.
And again, we have practice managers come in and do things like that now. Where they look at it and they say, “Well, we may just be able to take this off of here.” And it comes from a good place. The thing that I was always interested in is why do we discount? And how do we discount? And are we actually helping the people who need help when we discount? And that’s where your sort of talk on intentional discounting comes in. And so I’m going to stop talking here, and kind of turn it over to you for a second, and say, when you say intentional discounting, what do you mean by that? Because I want to make sure that we’re seeing the same vision.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
The emphasis is on intentional discounting. I feel like what’s happened over time is discounting has become a dirty word. It’s something that, honestly, I think we all still do, in some way, shape, or form, but we try to hide it. And maybe that is because we have management oversight, that we’re worried we would get in trouble for giving stuff away for free-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
… or for discounting. Or maybe it’s because we work off of a certain production number or we’re trying to meet certain standards. And so the idea that we would just give something away is seen as a very negative thing. And what I want to talk about is reframing it as doing it intentionally with a purpose, communicating the value of what you’re doing to the clients, and actually making the experience better for the clients and you in the hospital setting. Obviously, I work ER, so finances are a huge thing. And fortunately, I work for Veterinary Emergency Group and one of our things that we say is, “We give shit away for free.” So we openly discount. [inaudible 00:06:33]-
Dr. Andy Roark:
You say that, that’s on the website?
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
It’s not on the website, but that’s the thing that we say and we really truly believe in. So doctors have the ownership to do what they want with a case, financially, what they feel good about, and intentionally discount for a reason and for a purpose. And we can get into what some of those are.
But one of the first points-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
… that people have to realize are everyone discounts. It happens. And I think a lot of times we’re sneaky about it or we see it as a negative, and we’re trying to restructure and reframe it to, “It’s happening already. Let’s spin it into a positive thing for the team and for the client.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, so I want to pause on this, because, actually, I’m with you at this point. So to me, I do think that at some point, when push comes to shove, we all end up looking at this crying pet owner, and saying, “I desperately want to help this person and I desperately want to help this pet and they don’t have the finances that they need.” And what I say to people is, “We need to own this as the cost of doing business in this industry. We don’t have people who are going to kick that person out onto the street. That’s not who we are. That’s not our culture. That’s not what we want it to be our culture.”
At some point, we are kind, giving people who want to serve. That’s what we want to do. And so there is a discount cost of doing business in medicine. I don’t think that’s ever going to go away. I think people who try to make that go away are going to have real problems keeping their staff motivated, feeling good about work. I think that the culture part, it all plays into this. I really like how you’re sort of setting this up.
I think, for me, one of the things, and you didn’t mention this, when we talk about discounting and where people come down, you talked about management oversight and you talked about production bonus and being injured there, I think a lot about fairness. And when I think about discounting, I think about, “Is it fair for me to give this person who’s complaining loudly a break and not this person who just sucks it up? And I don’t know what their struggle is, but they just suck it up and they don’t say anything and they pay their bill.”
And I kind of feel like I think I treated that person who sucked it up unfairly, and maybe rewarded the person who just griped and complained loudly, and who knows what that person’s real situation is. So anyway, I wrestled with the fairness part as well in discounting and said, “How do I get my head around this?”
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
I think that one of the things that I would argue with is it’s not that-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
… you discount because someone gets angry or because someone says, “This costs too much. How could you charge me for that?” It’s because you discount, because you have communicated what this pet needs, you have shown the value of what they need, and people just truly can’t pay for it. Whether it’s in that moment, whether you need to just buy them some time to maybe reach out to family and friends.
You’re obviously not going to do a $10,000 surgery for free. That’s not happening. But there are cases where you could do something and you could help the pet not be painful anymore. You could maybe stop the vomiting, so they can get to the regular vet if they’re in your ER. And you could do those things for free, not completely break the bank on the hospital side of things, but have the owners feel like you actually care.
And it’s not because they’re acting like jerks, it’s not because they’re asking for it. It’s because you’ve had a conversation and said, “This is what’s going on with your pet. This is what they need. This is what it’s going to cost.” And they have said, “We really and truly just can’t do that. It’s not an option.” Or, “That high number’s not an option. This is where we are. This is our budget,” and you have to work within a budget.
So let me give an example. I have had people come in and were really suspicious of a foreign body. Well, in our ER, X-rays are expensive. The emergency fee is expensive. But I need to see is this actually something surgical or not? And then we need to be able to talk through the options for surgery. So sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll say, “You know what? Let me shoot an x-ray no charge.”
Let me just shoot a lateral x-ray, no charge, see if there’s an obvious foreign body or not. See if this is something that I could maybe give Cerenia, and you could see your vet in 10 hours. Or is this something that we have to figure out how to get this dog surgery. And owners, just the fact that I’m willing to get an answer for that and give away a $120 x-ray is very valuable to them. And so we shoot the x-ray, we see a foreign body, and they say, “Oh crap. The dog actually needs a procedure.”
So now it’s trying to figure out how do we make that happen either in our hospital, can it wait until they go somewhere else? But it’s getting them an answer, and it’s kind of working with them as a team and establishing that trust and that communication, so that you can take the next step. Does that make sense?
Dr. Andy Roark:
I have questions. I have questions.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
That’s fine.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so-
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
That’s fine. But it’s not the jerk client that’s yelling and arguing. That’s not who I’m discounting. That might be who the-
Dr. Andy Roark:
No, no. No, I get that.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
… medical director is discounting. I’m discounting for the people who truly need something done for their pet in that moment, and they just really can’t afford it. Or they don’t have an answer, yet, that helps them move on to that next step financially and work through it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. I like this. So when we start to talk about what intentional means, now we’re starting to get into the weeds. Because I think what neither of us is talking about is willy-nilly takes $5 off of this, we’re not going to charge for that. And just kind of going through scattering discounts around.
And I really want to emphasize that, for me, I have seen that my whole career and it’s awful. It’s not-
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
It’s not right.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I don’t know that it actually moves the needle in a way that matters. It’s bad for the practice. You can’t budget for the practice. You can’t set your profitability expectations, so you can raise salaries. You just can’t do these things when people are randomly giving away money here and there, and not charging for this and that. And I have seen those practices. I have seen those practices. And I remember in the past, and it’s been probably a decade since I saw these numbers, but I remember stuff about your average veterinarian gives away six figures worth of services every year.
And I believe those numbers. And I don’t know if they’re still true, I suspect they are, they’re just better hidden than they used to be. But this was kind of willy-nilly giving. And so I use this analogy when I think about discounting like this, and just sort of willy-nilly, we’re going to do a little of this and do a little of that. There’s two things. There’s the research with Adam Grant, so he wrote the book Give and Take.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
I love him.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And he had this research, where he talked about how people feel about charitable work. And so what he did was he looked at people who just help people throughout the day, and they would just do a little bit of this here and a little bit of that there. And they would just kind of along and along, they just help people. And then they looked at people who blocked time on their calendar, say, one morning a week, and they went to the soup kitchen. And they did three hours at the soup kitchen on Thursday mornings.
And he looked to say, “Who’s happier? Is it the people who give along and along throughout the day? Or is it the people who just have a block of time, and they say, ‘This is how I give, and this is where I give and I go and do it'”? And what he found was the happiness, the feeling of satisfaction and pride in the people who block the time and was like, “This is how we do it,” their happiness was a lot greater.
And so I think about veterinarians that kind of take a little bit off of this and take a little bit off of that, I’ve probably done things like that in my career and generally felt crappy about it the whole time. Because I feel like I’m not doing a good job, I don’t know if I’m really helping them. I worry about the fairness thing I talked about before. So that’s the first part.
The second part is when I think about impact that we have through giving, and I look at, it’s the difference from me in giving money to someone who’s panhandling beside the road versus donating a chunk of money to the local soup kitchen. And I’m not trying to put values on anything, and say, “You should do this or you should do that.” I feel like when I stop and say, “If I’m going to do a certain amount of good in the world, am I better off handing it out to people as I see them? Or am I better off rolling it together and doing something meaningful with it in an organized way?”
And I’ve come down in the second camp, and again, I’m not saying other people should feel this way. But I do feel like, “You know what? If I take a couple hundred bucks a month and do a thing with all of it as opposed to giving away 20 bucks whenever I pass somebody, I feel like I’m making a bigger difference.”
And so I take those two thoughts, the happiness and then the impact, and roll them together. And to me the way that we discount it needs to hit those buttons for me. I need to feel like I’m making an impact and then I need to feel good. Like, I’m not doing stuff I’m not supposed to, that I’m not coming up short as a veterinarian, that I’m being dishonest with my employer. All those things are important to me.
So as you started to talk about the intentional discounting and stuff, when you’re talking about the radiographs, I’m just trying to get my head around that. When you say, “Hey, we bring this pet in, let’s do a lateral radiograph, and just take a look.” I know there’s a lot of people who are going to scream and be like, “Standard of care!” And we can talk about what that looks like in a second. “One view, what are you talking about?” And I get it, and there’s people who are going to have that reaction.
My initial reaction is, what’s this system here? How is this intentional versus just being like, “Let’s just snap this”? Help me get my head first around the system part of it. Is there some guidelines about when we do this? Is there any sort of laid out system or process for making these decisions? Help me understand.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
I think there’s a couple important points. One, we do know that burnout is contributed to by not being able to practice the way you want to. So that feeling of everyone who walks in the door, you have to charge them every single thing. Someone’s looking over your shoulder. You can’t practice medicine the way that makes you feel good. There’s not access to care. You’re constantly being questioned about the standard of care, and there’s no ability to work in the gray zone, work with owners as a team, work within their finances, and actually help the pet, and feel good at the end of the day.
So when you have that dynamic, we know that, even if you’re practicing the best medicine in the world, you are charging, you’re making a ton of money, we still sometimes don’t feel good about what we’ve done. So it’s saying, “Hey…” Especially for the team as a whole, think about your technicians that have to go tell somebody, “Hey, your dog needs this. It’s going to be this much money.” And then have to work through the owners. They have no money. Why are we not helping their pet? And that feeling.
So I think it puts a team at a disadvantage if it’s just, when someone walks in the door, you have to get this money before we touch the pet, before we do anything. I just don’t think that’s a great way to work overall. And so at our hospitals, VEG, we are allowed to practice and make those decisions as doctors with what feels good. Some of the doctors I work with discount weigh more than me. I am actually one of the lower discounting doctors in the practice, but I have really great, I guess, client feedback that they’re happy with what I’ve done. I don’t have those crazy interactions in the ER where people scream at me over finances and not helping their pets.
So it’s looking at it at a case by case basis, and knowing what is most important, and what does the owner need in that moment? What does the pet need in that moment? Maybe you’re not going to work the pet up for every single thing they have going on. Maybe they’re vomiting, and you are going to give subcut fluids and Cerenia with the understanding that that is not the best thing.
That you do not know exactly what you’re treating, but you’re trying to buy time for that pet, or you’re trying to see if it works or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t work, they need to find finances and come back to get a full workup. But it is operating, I guess, autonomously, am I using the right word? And being able to make-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
… those decisions to be able to sleep better at night. So I don’t know that I answered your question just now, but I want to make sure that everyone understands that you have to work in a model and in a culture and in a hospital that is trusting of their doctors and their team overall. And there’s really not a set plan, right?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, okay.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
That it’s based off of those interactions one-on-one. Does that help at all?
Dr. Andy Roark:
It does. It does.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
And it’s being open about it. You’re open about it. You’re telling the clients. They know what you’re doing. You’re not [inaudible 00:19:00]-
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that’s interesting. I think that’s what you’re talking about, it’s basically veterinary medicine that I’ve seen a million times, just being really open about what’s happening as opposed to, “Shh, don’t tell anybody.” It’s an interesting concept.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
You know how we say, drop that pet on the… All the time, and I’ve worked so many places, “Oh, look, the pet fell on the x-ray machine, and we took x-rays. Oh, look like…” Right? I mean that happens-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
… all the time. You’re like, “Well, let’s just do it.” But not really be open about it and not really charge for it. And I’m like, “No, be open about it. Say, ‘I’m going to take this x-ray for free. Let’s get some answers. Okay, guess what? Your pet has bicavitary effusion. We need to put them to sleep.'” But we got you an answer and you feel better about it. And what I suspected has been confirmed.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I cannot look at you in the face and tell you I have not stepped on the x-ray pedal and said, “Oops,” before.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. Yeah, we’ll just… Real talk here.
Hey guys, I just want to hop in really quick and give a quick plug. The Uncharted Veterinary Conference is coming in April. Guys, I founded the Uncharted Veterinary Conference in 2017. It is a one-of-a-kind conference. It is all about business. It is about internal communications, working effectively inside your practice. If you’re a leader, that means you can be a medical director. It means you can be an associate vet who really wants to work well with your technicians. It means you can be a head technician, a head CSR, you can be practice owner, practice manager, multi-site manager, multi-site medical director. We work with a lot of those people.
This is all about building systems, setting expectations to work effectively with your people. Guys, Uncharted is a pure mentorship conference. That means that we come together and there is a lot of discussion. We create a significant percentage of the schedule, the agenda at the event, which means we’re going to talk about the things that you are interested in. It is always, as I said, business communication focused, but lots of freedom inside that to make sure that you get to talk about what you want to talk about.
We really prioritize people being able to have one-on-one conversations to pick people’s brains, to get advice from people who have wrestled with the problems that they are currently wrestled with. We make all that stuff happen. If you want to come to a conference where you do not sit and get lectured at, but you work on your own practice, your own challenges, your own growth and development, that’s what Uncharted is. Take a chance, give us a look, come and check it out. It is in April. I’ll put a link in the show notes for registration. Ask anybody who’s been, it’s something special. All right, let’s get back into this episode.
I think that’s really interesting, all right. And I think this is really, really interesting, and this is why I want to talk with you about it. When I look at where medicine’s going and rising standard of care, meaning, we get more and more advanced in what we can do and what the gold standard of care is, and significant increase in prices and that’s higher wages, which is good. This is the thing is I want people to make a living wage in vet medicine. I want them to be taken care of and I grip my teeth, and go, “Ugh.”
I talked to practice owners last week at the Uncharted Practice Owner Summit, and a number of them said pretty straightforward, “The average member of my staff could not afford to be a client in my practice, and that bothers me at a deep level.” And I thought that was very sort of vulnerable, candid conversation. But I see that as well and go, “Man, I don’t want to…” I think it’s hard to keep people motivated when they say I’m performing a service that I couldn’t afford to have, and telling everyone this is what they need to do and this is what it means to be a good pet owner.
And so I think that what you’re talking about, and we sort mentioned the standard of care before about doing the one lateral view, this is very much at the heart of what the spectrum of care conversation looks like in practice. There’s a lot of hand waving of, “Spectrum of care and what does it mean?” And this is what it actually looks like in the practice is going, “Yeah, I understand two views are better than one. I get it. I understand that they’re exponentially better than one. I get it. That’s not what we have the resources to do. And so we’re picking the better of not great options here.”
And so I think you’re really very much getting into functional standard of care or spectrum of care kind of work. And then integrating the finance part of that too is to go, “Well, there is spectrum of care, and then there’s also how do we make this affordable?” And there’s a lot of different ways to do that. I think it’s got to be a multimodal approach to keep care affordable, and to help pet owners out.
Talk to me a bit about what tracking this looks like. Because I want to believe that this is very much not the old school, the vet kind of does what they want and nobody tracks it. It’s like, “Oh yeah, I don’t know what he… We just give stuff away.” But I have to believe that the modern version of intentional discounting, if you go this way, it’s got to be built on tracking, so that we can see what we’re doing, so we can see what we’re giving away.
I think to me as I listen to this, I go, “That’s got to be what’s different, is by making it an open thing we talk about, we can at least track it, we can budget for it, we can understand it.” It’s not kind of old school vet clinic, where the books are a ledger in the back and they never balance it. It can’t be that. Help me understand the tracking, the measuring, the monitoring.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
I am going to put it on the bill, and I’m going to zero it out so the owner sees what the value is. When I add that discount in, it’s going to be under me. And so I can, with my medical director, look and see where I fell on the discount side of things, how much I discounted. But another component of that is your NPS. So people that rated you after their interactions with you, your net promoter score, what was that score?
So are you making clients happy? Are clients leaving and they are willing to recommend the practice to other people? Are they leaving good reviews? So there’s a lot of value in having clients be happy, in not having those really negative interactions in your practice that are traumatizing for all involved. So you’re balancing out those two things. You can’t look at it as just, how much did you discount?
I work hard enough and I make enough money that it’s okay if I discount a little bit. And I either get a client to do more for the pet, because I got them an answer or I get them to be happy and then recommend us and leave good reviews, and do things that are positive for the practice, then constantly having this caustic interaction with clients fighting over money.
I think it takes a little bit of a maturity. I see a lot of the younger vets that I train come in and they do, as soon as something gets a little uncomfortable with the client, they just want to give something away. And I’m like, “That is not it. That’s not it.” You’re finding something you can do. It’s a pain injection. It’s something that you can do, because you’re truly listening to the client. You’re listening to what the pet needs. They feel like you care, they trust you, you’re communicating what you’re doing, and that maybe it’s not everything you would like to do, but you’re trying to help.
And there is value in that that comes out that is almost immeasurable. But you can track things like net promoter score, and you can track things, how much you’re discounting, just to keep up with it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, talk to me more about net promoter score for veterinarian. That’s a term I’m very familiar with from the conference business, where we look at marketing and happy customers coming out of our events. But I haven’t heard that as a term that we track for veterinarians. So break that down for me a little bit, please.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
Every client that leaves your practice, leaves your hospital should get some sort of follow up. Now with the way things are electronically, you should be able to send a message, “Thank you so much for bring fluffy in,” whether it was for the vaccines. “We hope they’re doing well. If you get a chance, please fill out this survey about your visit.”
And what you’re looking to do is get people who actually reply to those surveys. You’re looking to see what was their visit. So if it’s one to 10, you ideally want only above sixes. People that are nine and tens and sometimes eights are willing to promote you. So they’re willing to talk about you outside of the practice, talk about their experience, and that is really valuable. People that are a little lower had a great experience, but they’re probably not going to tell people about it. And then anything under a six in general, you’re like, “Eh, we could have done a dramatically better job.”
But you’re looking to see what was their experience based on a lot of different categories, and where they kind of rank you. And you can do that and get enough data to see as a veterinarian, as a team, based on who they’re shouting out, how are we doing? How are we communicating? How are we interacting with people? And you should have a positive net promoter score. So you should have something that is higher. And I have a high net promoter score and I also discount.
And so I guess it’s not one or the other, but I think it is a good thing to sit down as a team and say, “How are we doing? What’s the perception of what we’re doing? How does the team feel about what we’re doing? How did the clients feel about what we’re doing? How does management feel?” It is an overall discussion. But when your culture is one where you can give step away for free, so that you can go home and sleep at night, it’s not something that’s hidden. It’s something that’s celebrated. We helped people. We helped their pets. And that’s just a different way of looking at things.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Are there guidelines on when you think the discounting is okay or things that are put forward? So I love that you say, “I discount because I see this as an opportunity. We’re making this difference.” And you also own the fact that there’s this natural tendency that when somebody gets upset at you, you can make them happy by giving them things.
And that’s very true. There’s so much nuance here. There’s so much nuance between. “We do not reduce our prices in any way, shape or form. They are what they are. And if you can’t pay them, then you need to go somewhere else.” And, “Just come on in. Just tell me, what do you feel comfortable paying? And that’s going to cost.”
There’s a lot of space between that. Lots of shades of gray here. Try to give me something tangible to put my feet on as I drift through this space, of this feels in bounds and this feels out of bounds. Are there guidelines something that I could communicate to someone else other than, “Let see how you feel”?
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
SoI think I have some personal guidelines that I share with other veterinarians. There’s obviously a point, I don’t give away thousands of dollars of free stuff, but if there’s an emergency C-section and I’m worried that the pet’s life is in danger, the puppies’ life is in danger, and I know that I can skip some of those things that we can be considered standard of care.
Ideally, on a emergency c-section, you’re doing full blood work, full imaging, catheter, you’re doing all the things, you’re hospitalizing them for a while afterwards. There’s a lot. There’s some things that I can probably cut out of there, and make sure the patient is stable enough for surgery, but get the surgery done and help the pet and help those puppies. And I can discount it right down. I still need to charge a certain amount, but I can discount some things out.
And so it is looking at the case, but I’m not going to take a hit by car pet that has a completely shattered backend, pulmonary contusions, and the owner has no money for the follow-up care that this pet needs after their emergency visit. I’m not going to just give them $10,000 worth of hospitalization and management. So there needs to be the potential for a good outcome. There needs to be a pet that is not suffering, that if what you do and not maybe getting an answer, you’re not going to prolong suffering or make something worse for a pet. There needs to be the ability to communicate other resources.
So we have a lot of rescues and organizations we work with that we can direct people to, to get additional funding. And one of the biggest things that I try to teach young veterinarians is, if you give people time, people find money. So I have-
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yep, I agree with that.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
… a lot of owners that I will say, “Let’s do A, B and C. I will discount this, and take your pet home. If they continue to do what you came in for, come back. We need to do a full workup. We need to do more of a treatment, or we need to hospitalize. This is what that would look like.” And you would be surprised how many owners come back in 12 hours and say, “They started throwing up again, but I called Aunt Susan and I now have the money to hospitalize.”
So for me, I don’t do it on cases that the pet is suffering, that I know I can’t help them, I can’t save them. I don’t do it on cases where I think there’s something that I medically would cause an issue if I just made a guess. But I think after 14 years, I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on with a majority of pets. And so there is that innate understanding and ability to say, “I can do this. It’s not going to make it worse. And I am here if something changes and does get worse.”
It’s not a. “Let me do this, send you away, don’t ever come back here.” It’s a, “This is one step, but we might have more steps in the future.” And setting them up for that possibility and setting them up for the next thing. So it’s all about communication. I mean that’s really what it comes down to, right?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Well, the part when you say, “If you give people time, they’ll find money,” that really tracks with what I’ve seen. How many times have I had a case in and treated it empirically, because that’s what we had the resources for and said to them, “This is not ideal. If the limping continues, if vomiting continues, if whatever, I will see you back tomorrow, and we’re going to need to do these other things.” And what I’ve found is that people tend to come back, if they need to. And when they come back, they have accepted what we’re going to do, and they’re generally much more prepared for it. And if you think about the cases that you see, I think most of us in the rooms will have that experience. That totally makes sense.
Talk to me a little bit about, “We still need to charge a certain amount,” is sort of what you said. And there’s things like hard costs. It’s one thing to say, “Well, I’m going to step on this x-ray pedal and make this digital image here to look at.” It’s another thing to say, “I’m going to go to surgery for two hours and spend a lot of anesthesia and pain medicines and tech time and things like that.” Those are just different things.
Does that come into your calculations at all? Walk me through any sort of guide rails, because you seem like you have them. Because you’re saying like, “Oh, we can do something here, but we can’t do everything here.” And do you have any sort of thoughts like that come in as far as how much you’re doing?
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
Yeah, so in the ER there’s some really simple, like a blocked cat, a GDB, a hemo abdomen that needs a splenectomy, a mesenteric torsion. Those are just some things I saw the last couple days. I need to have very frank conversations with those owners about what that pet needs, what possible outcomes are, and financially, what it could look like. And I need a deposit and I need a substantial deposit for those. I am not taking those pets to surgery until there is a very clear understanding of what is going on with these pets.
And so there is no rushing into surgery if the owners have just no finances, because you don’t know the outcomes and you don’t know how long those pets might need to be hospitalized. And there’s too many uncertainties. And it’s not fair to this pet to not be able to do everything you need to for them. But if you have a golden doodle that looks great, that threw up three times, and maybe ate something, but maybe didn’t, and palpates normal and is happy and healthy. And you have a conversation, the owner says, “It’s Christmastime. I just got a lot of presents. I just really can’t afford to do all the x-rays and all the things.”
In those moments, I either say, “I really am worried about something significant,” so maybe I do an x-ray real quick for free, and I can take two views and no charge it. It’s not going to break the bank but I’m going to have them pay for subcut fluids and Cerenia and the emergency fee if everything looks okay on x-ray. And so it doesn’t mean it’s all or nothing, with a lot of these cases. I have a lot of owners that say, “I have $200.” Okay, I’m going to work within that $200, do what I can. But if they also need Clavamox to go home or an antibiotic, I will do the antibiotic, maybe, for free.
And so I think the thing that we have a hard time with as veterinarians, it’s like everything has to be black and white or there has to be rules. And unfortunately, this is a very innate thing. It’s kind of doing it a couple times and communicating and realizing what does and doesn’t make sense. Making sure you’re very clear about what you’re doing and the value of it. But I think the big picture you have to have is why are you doing it? How does it help the team? How does it help the pet?
And when you look at it that way versus what are all the possible negatives from it? Or what makes it hard or tricky? It gets easier and easier on a case by case basis. But it is hard for me to say, “This is it. These are the rules. And if you do this, it’ll work for you.” Because it’s very dependent on the practice and it’s very dependent on the communication, and it is a case by case basis. But I think being transparent about discounting has a lot of value in veterinary medicine, when done the right way.
Dr. Andy Roark:
This has been great. I have a lot to sit with here. I like your point on transparency. I do think that this is really where the rubber meets the road on spectrum of care, in a lot of ways. I mean, I think that are talking openly about things that have gone on, and it’s just sort of the built-in cost of doing business in the profession. I think you’re hitting on all these sorts of things. I’m going to sit with this a little while. So this has been outstanding. You are doing this presentation at Western Vet Conference in Las Vegas in February, I believe.
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It’s February, right?
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
And we’re going to do it on a, I’m going to try to do a case-based one, where we can actually say, “Let’s talk about these cases. Let’s look at this case. Why would we discount? How did we discount? How did it play out?” To give people like a little bit more of a tangible experience around it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That sounds great. And then where can people find you online, Tannetje’?
Dr. Tannetje’ Crocker:
I am on all the social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, dr.tannetje.crocker. I do have a website, drcrockerpetvet.com. So if you need somebody for a speaking engagement, if you just want to connect, I love networking and hearing about things going on in veterinary medicine. And I absolutely love this profession and could talk about these things all day. So thank you so much for having me on, Andy.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, absolutely. I’ll put links to your socials down in the show notes. Guys, thanks for being here. Take care of yourselves.
And that is it, guys. That’s the episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I hope you got a good amount to think about. If you did, as always, the kindest thing you can do is share with your friends. Spread the word, spread the joy. Help people know about what we do in the podcast. Write me an honest review wherever you get your podcasts. All that stuff is super helpful. Gang, thanks for being here. Take care of yourselves. I’ll talk to you later on.
