*** This episode is made possible ad-free by Purina ProPlan VetDirect***
Have you started home delivery of therapeutic diets yet? In this episode, Dr. Matt Duemler tells the story of how and why Burnt Hills Veterinary Hospital took up home delivery. He talks about how he discussed it with the staff to get them on-board, and what his experience has been like so far.
This episode is made possible ad-free by Purina ProPlan VetDirect.
LINKS
Purina ProPlan VetDirect: https://www.proplanvetdirect.com/
Purina Institute: https://www.purinainstitute.com/
Burnt Hills Veterinary Hospital: https://www.burnthillsvethosp.com/
What’s on my Scrubs?! Card Game: https://drandyroark.com/training-tools/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Matt Duemler – Burnt Hills Veterinary Hospital, Burnt Hills, NY. There are very few people in this world I would change lives with! I have had many blessings in my life but finding a career that not only provides me the ability to support my family but also gives me a purpose each and every day has been one of the best. The old saying is “Find a job you enjoy and you will never work a day in your life”. This is so true!
Providing animal care has always been a part of my life, since growing up on my parent’s farm in Perth, NY. A graduate of Broadalbin-Perth, my college years were spent first at St. Lawrence University where I majored in Neuroscience and studied abroad in Denmark. I was then fortunate to be accepted to and attend veterinary school at the University of Tennessee. Throughout school, the complexities and capabilities of medicine left me in awe. I knew I wanted to spend my days helping people, and combined with my fondness for animals, veterinary medicine became a no brainer.
Every day is different, and I love it! I especially enjoy the days I spend in surgery putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. I have challenged myself to learn advanced techniques allowing me to treat a variety of issues. I have completed multiple advanced training courses and received a variety of professional certifications. This training allows me to evaluate a patient from start to finish.
I am able to perform the diagnostic test necessary such as diagnostic ultrasounds, repair multiple orthopedic issues including fractures, cruciate repairs and patella luxation, general surgical procedures such as removal of kidneys, spleens and gall bladders, as well as advanced certifications in regenerative medicine techniques such as Stem Cell and Platelet Rich Plasma therapies. There is no better moment than when a family is reunited for the first time after seeing a loved one battle through an illness. Our patients are resilient and very often inspiring.
When not “working” on animals, I spend my days with my beautiful wife and 2 amazing children. We have built our forever home here in Burnt Hills, the same town in which my mother-in-law grew up. My children will be able to learn in the same classrooms she did. Family and community have always been important to me. This is one of the main reasons my wife and I agreed to take over the leadership of the hospital. We are very proud to lead the community’s best veterinary hospital, while continuing its rich history of being a family run business. Unfortunately, in today’s veterinary community, being a family run business, centered on family values, is a rare commodity.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark:
This episode is made possible ad-free by Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome, everybody, to the Cone of Shame veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I am here with a fantastic guest today. My buddy, Dr. Matt Duemler, he and his wife are co-owners of Burnt Hills Veterinary Hospital in Burnt Hills, New York. A quick aside, plug: Matt, like so many of us, is looking to hire associates and support staff so if you’re in the Burnt Hills, New York area and you’re like, “That guy sounds awesome.” Maybe give him a call. That’s it, Matt. That’s as much of a plug as I’m doing for you. I promised to help. That’s all I got.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Gang, I am talking with Matt today about home delivery. Listen, I am a huge fan of the idea of home delivery and subscription services in vet medicine. Guys, we need to make vet medicine and pet health convenient because convenience trumps all right now and it’s only getting more that way. And automatic payment, subscription payments, things that keep one-time, big-lump payments to a minimum, I think that stuff is financially critical for the health of our profession going forward and us being able to get care to pets and to pet owners.
Dr. Andy Roark:
So guys, that’s what we’re talking about today is how Burnt Hills Veterinary Hospital set up direct delivery in their hospital. I asked Matt the hard questions: how did you get your team on board? What did this look like? What were the headaches? What were the push backs? What did the clients say? What did they like? What did they not like? And we just run through it all. Guys, I hope this will be a super useful episode for you. I love to hear how real practices are doing real, interesting things. And I think that is what we’re doing here. Gang, without further ado, let’s get into this episode.
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 Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Matt Duemler, how are you?
Dr. Matt Duemler:
Hi Andy, I’m doing well today. How are you?
Dr. Andy Roark:
I’m doing great. I appreciate you making time to be here. You have a fascinating story. You have something that I really geek out about. And so I feel like I’m going to kind of ambush you with my enthusiasm here and I’m sorry about that, but I’m just going to lay it out. So just for those who don’t know you, you are a co-practice owner with your wife, correct?
Dr. Matt Duemler:
Correct.
Dr. Andy Roark:
At Burnt Hills Veterinary Hospital in New York, it’s an 11-doctor practice. Just real quick, tell me about how you became the practice owner at Burnt Hills because it’s a head-slapping story that I think a lot of people will relate to.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
Yeah. So when I was in veterinary school, my grandmother came here for a pet and she raved of the doctors here. So I actually did my externship here as a student and fell in love with the place and came here right out of the veterinary school and had two great mentors who really advocated for us to learn procedures and do more and were not just, “Refer everything,” It was very hands-on, do as much as you can and I fell in love with it. 13 years later, they decided it was time for them to retire and the way the world was going, they did not want to sell to a corporation. They wanted to keep it family-owned. And so my wife and I decided that it would be a good opportunity for us to step up and continue the practice running the exact way that we had been practicing for years and wanted to keep it that way.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. So let me ask you this, were you the driver of this or was your wife? Who was the one who was like, “I want to do this.”
Dr. Matt Duemler:
I was the driver. Yeah. My wife loves the medicine but we do kind of divide it a little bit where I do more business stuff and she does more of the medical directing.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Okay. I just always think that’s interesting, when you have a married couple go in and I always wonder how hard one spouse has to push the other. I remember one time my wife and I had just moved to South Carolina and we thought we had housing lined up and we did not. We got there and the apartment we were renting fell apart and so we were homeless in South Carolina and we had to find a place to live. We had two little kids at this time. I mean like, baby and four years old.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so we were driving around and I found this house on Craigslist and a bunch of frat guys had lived in it and we got there and it was a dump. And the guy was like, “Hey, I haven’t had time to clean it up yet.” And I was just like, “We’ll take it.” And it was the one time in my life that I totally said, “We should do this,” when my wife was like, “No, I don’t know.” And I remember the stress that that caused me until it worked out to be OK. But yeah, I always think that “Hey, we should do this,” conversation is interesting.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
My boss and I had had a conversation for a few years like “When you retire, we’ll do this,” we worked through this for a few years, kind of planning and they kept saying, “No, not yet, not yet.” And I remember clear as day, I went, I said, “Hey, Dr. [inaudible 00:05:14], my wife is pregnant.” He’s like, “Oh great, congratulations,” blah, blah, blah. The next week he said, “Hey, we’re going to retire this day.” Awesome. So yeah, my son was born in September and we purchased the practice in January.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, man. That’s amazing. That’s some stress.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
It was little stressful. Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark:
A little stressful. All right. Well, let’s talk about what we’re here to talk about a little bit. So here’s where my head is at. I have this vision of the future in my crystal ball where vet medicine is really focused on convenience for pet owners, because I believe that convenience is king, even more so than price, for a lot of pet owners. I think people are busy. They want pet ownership to fit into their life. I don’t think people like making extra trips to the vet clinic. I just look at my own life and running kids around to extracurriculars and making extra trips for pet food or things like that. That stuff is just… It feels like more of a hurdle than it ever did before. And so I’m looking at how does that medicine integrate into this “convenience first” culture?
Dr. Andy Roark:
And I’m looking a lot at home delivery of medications and especially diets and therapeutic diets. And I think that setting up home delivery and things like that, I think that keeps the veterinarian and the veterinary practice very much central in the nutrition conversation, also just in the therapeutics conversation. And the other thing is, I feel like as a society, people are getting much more comfortable with home delivery. There’s an Amazon box coming to my house every other day, of just random things. Dish soap showed up today and that used to never be the case. You know? I remember being very skeptical of Amazon and buying anything online 20 years ago. And during the pandemic, my wife and I used home delivery of groceries for the first time. And again, I never would’ve had somebody bring groceries or just even think…And now we’ve done it. And we’re like, “Well, it’s a thing.” And I know a lot of people do that and use it.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And so I’m really looking at practices, especially established practices, who have leaned into home delivery and have gotten their team to buy into it and are actually making it work and you are doing that. You are doing that with the Vet Direct platform from Purina. And I would like to kind of start real high like that with you and sort of say, first of all, what’s your experience been? Tell the story of kind of what you’re doing and kind of what your general impression has been.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
So I think like everyone else, COVID changed how we did everything. And we initially were all having our diets here, tried to sell our diets from the hospital. And when a lot of shortages happened with the different diets, it was really difficult to make sure that our patients were getting the right diet in the right amount of time, they weren’t running out, those type of things. So we did reach out to Purina, we did partner with them and very happy that we did in that we found…
Dr. Matt Duemler:
The way that we do it here is we keep a small bag of all the diets that we want to sell. And so the first day, when we’re talking to the owners about it, we can send them home with it right then, they don’t have to go and wait for it. They don’t have to order it, it’s there, they can have it, their dog can try it, and then they can sign up to get it shipped directly to them after that.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
And that has really… Like you said, the convenience is great. We also found that the freshness is a lot better as well. And so we have a lot of clients who do buy stuff from some of the online retailers. And what we found is when they’re ordering from Purina directly versus online retailers, the expiration date is usually a few months fresher from Purina directly.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
And so that really was a added bonus we weren’t expecting. And I think that people are also very cost-conscious. And if you’re in the veterinary hospital, you have a lot of things that you want to… Medicine you want to practice, drugs you want to sell, what have you. And if you can say to them, say, “Hey, try this bag and then order it directly from Purina.” And they’re like, “Oh, they’ll ship it to me?” “Yep.” It’s not like you’re trying to upsell them on something else, it’s something they’re more willing to try if they feel like you’re trying to make it more convenient for them, which we definitely are.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. So a couple things there, I hadn’t really thought about. One, the freshness thing never occurred to me. Like I just… It totally makes sense, did not cross my mind. The other part is… And we see this a lot, and this is why I’m big on the subscription sort of model. We’ve seen this when you have pets that come in and they’re getting their heartworm prevention, they’re getting their flea and tick prevention and then you’re talking about some blood work and a therapeutic diet. It’s just not going to happen. And it’s just because of that one-time expense versus if they don’t get flea and tick and heartworm prevention right now, they’re much more open to doing that senior blood work. Really, it’s kind of this weird mentality.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It’s kind of the mentality a lot of people have been putting forward with wellness plans for a long time. They’re like, “Oh, people will do stuff. It’s just that what they’re writing the check for today seems to really matter to them.” And so by sort of offloading or spreading out those costs, they seem much more willing to sort of go along. And so that makes a ton of sense to me.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I want to get into what this really looks like in practice, but the first thing I always got to say is, I think the question I get most often is how did your team receive this idea? We’re talking about during the pandemic. You’re like, “Hey guys, we’re going to start having this conversation. We’re going to start setting this thing up.” What was the reaction of the team when you rolled out something else for them to do during a pandemic?
Dr. Matt Duemler:
So if I break it down, I’d say our veterinarians, our doctors were very accepting of it, because we were already using a lot of Purina diets, so doctors were on board right away. Our staff, we kind of slowly rolled it out. We made one person our Purina point person. And whenever a client had a question about how to set up their account or how to order it, she would walk them through that. And I would say that’s probably the only glitch we had is that your initial setup of Purina is a little bit more complicated than going to Chewy and just clicking the button. And so we did have some non-computer savvy clients that Chewy’s much easier, “I understand the benefits. I’m just going go to Chewy.”
Dr. Matt Duemler:
And so we had one kind of point person who would go through every day and check, make sure that the orders were approved when they were needed. And the doctor would just write the note of what diet they wanted and they could approve that. And then, I think that the next thing that we did was every time that we received a request for food, whether it was to buy it from us or to buy it from our online retailer, we sent the clients an email stating, “Hey, we recommend buying it through Vet Direct because it’s fresher, it’s guaranteed,” all the different things that we liked about it. And “If you’d still like to get it somewhere else, great, but we recommend this,” and I’d say probably 75% of our clients follow that email and will go to Vet Direct and order it from there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. That makes sense. What kind of training did you do? Talk to me about the workflow in your practice to have these conversations. Is this a technician conversation, is it a doctor conversation? Who’s having the conversation and where are they having it?
Dr. Matt Duemler:
Yeah. So I think that the initial conversation always comes from the doctor and which type of food they recommend and why they recommend it. And therefore, the really nice thing with both the Purina food we sell here and if they get it from Vet Direct, we can tell the client very clearly, “Hey, try this bag of food. If your dog won’t eat it just either donate it to a shelter or what have you, but we’ll give you a refund for it.” And Purina has been really, really great at working with our clients on that and helping. So that’s the one fear, it’s like you said, you have this big bill already, now you’re adding on a $50 bag of food, but will he eat it? Will they eat it? Will they not? And it gets kind of rid of that issue.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
And then the second training really goes through our front-end team when people are calling to request these refills or requesting food in general, to be able to just kind of direct them to the website and direct them on different ways to order. And we have three main points that we make to them, why we recommend to order it there. And so they’re all kind of training those points. And if there’s more conversation we had, our doctors can have that, but it’s typically handled with our front-end staff.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. That’s nice to move it out of the exam room. What are the main questions or what are the main pushback that you get from clients? How do they receive these recommendations? Are there sort of standard responses or obstacles that you get from them?
Dr. Matt Duemler:
You know, I think for our brand-new diets, our brand-new clients who are taking those, again, they’re very happy to have that small bag to try and then to have it shipped to them later. They think that’s great. The challenge does come with clients who have already ordered it from an online retailer. Like you said, with those subscriptions and the way that they’re set up, they’re perfect. They do it very seamlessly. They feel like they’ve already purchased it. They’ve committed to these people. And it’s that’s a little bit of a bigger challenge. And I think those are probably the two main things is letting them know that they’re getting it fresh, they’re getting the best price and that we can still get it from someplace other than online retailers.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Is there anything that you wish you knew when you started that you know now?
Dr. Matt Duemler:
So I learned a lot more about online retailers than I wanted to know, to be honest. So I think the only thing that was really difficult with the rollout of the Vet Direct is truly the initial sign up on the website is a little bit more difficult than Chewy or PetMeds or any of the other ones. And so we weren’t quite ready to answer those questions, why is it harder? Because we hadn’t done it yet. Now, I think we’re pretty well-trained in being able to walk them through and help them set that up.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Gotcha. Okay.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
I think the other point of it is the fact that we can get paid and never actually touch the bag of food is amazing.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. I’m sure. Keeping the vet involved in that is fantastic. When they go and they register, they indicate who their vet is or how’s that communication done? How do you sort of stay in that loop, I guess?
Dr. Matt Duemler:
Sure. So there’s two different ways. If you go to Vet Direct, you can search for your veterinarian and our name pops up or every hospital has a code. And so we do hand them a flyer with our code on it that gives them all the directions of “Here, go online, go to this website, punch in this code, order it.” And then the only thing that we have to do after they do that is approve it for a year or six months or however long we want to approve it for. But that proceeded pretty seamless, it works well.
Dr. Andy Roark:
What is your impression of compliance with this compared to before you were having home delivery? Do you feel like it moves the needle as far as how much of a therapeutic diet pets are getting or how long they’re staying on it?
Dr. Matt Duemler:
So I don’t know that I have those numbers accurately. My impression would be that because of the convenience, people are using it more readily. And we do it more, besides the food, things like FortiFlora or the probiotics, I think where, before they’d be like, “Oh, I’m on a probiotic, let me just pick up a random probiotic at the drug store.” It’s easy for them to click on Vet Direct and have it shipped right to them again. And so I feel like a diet, there’s not really other alternatives and people have been pretty… They either are going to use it or they’re not, but when you have the [inaudible 00:17:37] and the FortiFloras and those type of things, and they will start to look for comparables out there if it’s not convenient for them.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Perfect. No, that totally makes… I hadn’t thought about adding in the probiotics, things like that. Awesome. Well, Matt, thanks a lot for walking me through it. Any final words of wisdom, pearls for vet clinics that are thinking about adding home delivery, any pitfalls that you want to point out and be like, “Watch out for this”?
Dr. Matt Duemler:
I think that when you hear a lot of people lecture about the business aspect of veterinary medicine, there definitely are lectures who just say, “Eh, let your pharmacy go. You can’t compete with online. You can’t compete with at these bigger box stores,” what have you. And I disagree with that wholeheartedly. We have acted very aggressively in matching prices and helping with convenience, with setting up places like Vet Direct. We made the philosophy of partnering with really good companies and saying, “We want to provide the best. How do we do this together?” And whether it’s rebates or discounts or what have you, I feel like we’ve really been able to continue to offer the best medicine and keep those business profits and those incentives in our hospital to help fuel other things that we need, whether it’s new equipment or more staff, or we’re always hiring up with a plug out there for you.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Burnt Hill Veterinary Hospital. That’s fantastic.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
So I think that’s what our philosophy has been. Practice good medicine, partner with really good companies, good people. And the business aspect works out itself.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Are you doing home delivery in other product areas like parasiticides, things like that as well? Talk to me a little bit about that.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
Yeah. So we’re doing a in-house. So we have, with a couple of those products, been able to match them. And we’ll tell clients, say, “If you want us to ship them to you, we’ll ship them.” And the companies that we partnered with have been paying those shipping costs for us. And we’ve been able to both help financially by selling more products, but also take away some of the stress on our staff of having to receive the request, to validate the request, send them back. And that was a huge headache that we’ve really reduced significantly by using things like Vet Direct and also setting up our own kind of shipping to home from our products. And we haven’t used any of the big suppliers for online pharmacies. At this point, we’ve kept what we could in-house.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. That totally makes sense. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing your experience and expertise. I really do appreciate it.
Dr. Matt Duemler:
Well, thank you. It was very nice meeting you and very nice being on your show.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that is our episode. Guys, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Special mega thanks to Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets for making this podcast episode possible. Guys, until next week, please take care of yourselves, be well. And don’t forget to enjoy the little things you find along the way in practice. Guys, that medicine is still a wonderful, wonderful place. Don’t lose sight of that. Take care, everybody. See you later.
