Team Culture

Dr. Kate Boatright joins the podcast to discuss her recent article on veterinary school admissions and demographic trends.

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LINKS

The Next Generation of Veterinarians (Article): https://todaysveterinarypractice.com/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/the-next-generation-of-veterinarians/?oly_enc_id=5467B7086134E1Y

The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It – https://amzn.to/3gNeG70

Pawsibilities Vet Med: https://www.pawsibilitiesvetmed.com/

Journey for Teams: https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/diversity-and-inclusion-veterinary-medicine/journey-teams

Blend: https://www.blend.vet/

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

Links to Amazon.com are affiliate links and help support the show. (They’re also much smaller than normal links and easier to copy when typing up show notes!)

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Kate Boatright has been in small animal practice since graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. After nearly 8 years of full time practice in both general practice and emergency clinics, she moved to part-time clinical work to pursue her passion for educating veterinary professionals as a freelance speaker and author. Dr. Boatright enjoys discussing mentorship, the unique challenges facing recent graduates, wellness, and the spectrum of care. She believes deeply in the role of organized veterinary medicine and holds leadership positions in the AVMA and her local and state VMAs. She is a former national officer of the VBMA and was a founding member of the VBMA Alumni. In her remaining time, she stays busy chasing her toddler, running, reading, and watching movies with her husband and cats.

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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. Kate Boatright, and we were talking about a new article she put out recently looking at the demographics of vet medicine and where it’s going. She’s looking at demographic trends in veterinary school in the new class for veterinary school, and it’s fascinating stuff, guys. Enrollment for vet schools is going up, the vet schools are getting bigger, and we’ve got LMU putting out two classes a year coming up and getting started. We’ve got larger class sizes, we have got increasing diversity in our profession. Yay.
We have decreasing percentages of men in our profession. Ooh. We talk about the driving factors for those trends. We talk about what it looks like and where it goes in the future. We talk a bit about feminization of that medicine. We talk a bit about what’s going on in the education in general. We talk about a lower number of men graduating college, and what that means for vet schools and things like that. So it’s a sprawling demographic conversation as we look at medicine and the composition of medicine and where’s it going. So guys, I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did. 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. Kate Boatright, how are you doing?

Dr. Kate Boatright:
I’m doing great. How are you Andy?

Dr. Andy Roark:
I am doing pretty darn well, actually. So yeah, thanks so much for being here. It is a real thrill for me to have you here, because I remember when you were a baby vet student. When we met is when you were in vet school, you went to Penn, right? VMD?

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I’m a Pennwe.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I remember when we met. I’ve been thinking, I may need to stop saying that, because there’s more and more people now is like, “I remember you were in vet school.” And I’m like, “I don’t know if people like to be introduced that way.” I remember you from there, but you have gone on and already had a distinguished career pretty quickly. You are writing a lot. I see your name a lot. You write for dvm360, you’re doing some stuff, you have a regular thing at AAHA trends, I think. You do NEWStat, you write for today’s vet practice, is what we’re going to talk about today. I saw an article there that you did that I really liked, that I want to talk to you about. You’re just doing a lot of stuff. You’re doing some speaking stuff, I’m seeing you on some of the conference programs and things like that.
I wanted to get in with you and talk about this article. So it was in the October, Today’s Vet Practice, and it was called, The Next Generation of Veterinarians. This article is about enrollment in vet schools today, and changing demographic trends that we are seeing. And I actually thought it was really interesting. And so, what I want to do with you today, is just walk through what are we seeing from a diversity, equity and inclusion standpoint? What are we seeing as far as changing demographics in the vet school? Talk to me at a high level and then let’s start to drill down.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah, absolutely. The article focused on the AAVMC’s data report on the current demographics of the veterinary student population that was published, I think it was over last summer. And the big three trends that they highlighted were increasing enrollment, which is a good thing for our veterinary shortage right now. And then significant improvement in DEI, but a continued decline in our male student population. And I was able to talk to Dr. Lisa Greenhill over at AAVMC for the article, and she gave me a lot of the context of the data. I think I quoted her, the story the data tells, is the fun part.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Gotcha. Okay. Well, I’m going to let you take it from here. I’m interested in, when we talk about increased enrollment, how much enrollment are we talking about? So let me start with that before we dig into the story the data tell. What are we talking, is this a 5% increase? Is it a 20% increase? What scale of increased veterinarian production are we seeing now?

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah. The current in the incoming class, so this would be for the class of 2025 that we’re entering vet school this fall, we saw about, it was a little over 4%. I think it was 4.7% overall increased enrollment from the previous year. And one of the big drivers of that has been the opening of some new schools, so we’ve seen new schools pop up. We’re starting to see schools like Lincoln Memorial are introducing a second class in the calendar year, which is going to be another increase in our enrollment. I remember when I started vet school, there was a huge jump in enrollment around that time. So I started vet school back in 2009, and I remember that everybody was saying there was a veterinarian shortage.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I remember that.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
No, there has been a surplus. They were saying there has been a surplus.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I’ve never forgotten this. So I’ll tell you the story just real quick, because it has always affected my thinking ever since. So I graduated in 2008, and there was this anger about the surplus of veterinarians, and we are going to be swamped in veterinarians and nobody’s going to have a job, and veterinarians are going to work for peanuts, because there’s going to be so many of us. People were angry, and that was the defining narrative. It was everywhere. And then jump ahead about three, four, five years, I was watching Dani McVety lecture at a conference one time. It was a town forum type thing, so it was this open discussion. And someone from the audience was grilling Dani, who’s a good friend of mine, and grilling her.
And they were like, “With all of these veterinarians, and blah, blah, blah.” And Dani was the first person I ever heard just really pushed back. She’s the founder of Lap of Love Vet Hospice and they were growing really fast at the time. And she said, “Where are these veterinarians that you’re talking about, because I can’t find them. Because I would hire them, and they’re not there.” And there was murmuring in the room from people who were like, “I have also struggled to hire a veterinarian.” And that was, for me, was almost like, I just saw the tide turn in this room, and it never went back. And after that, the chorus just came up of, “We can’t get help.” But I say that, because the narrative people were so certain, and they were just like, “This is what it is.”
And then I saw it turn in that room and then it just ran away. And it’s funny, I’ve always remembered that, because you hear these things and people say, “Well that’s just what it is.” And I go, I’ve heard that story before, and sometimes that’s not what it is. And sometimes the idea changes really fast. And so, it’s just funny whenever people talk about doom and gloom, it was just funny that the doom and gloom was, there’s too many of us. And it immediately flipped in doom and gloom of, there’s not enough of us.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s also always been the question of, are there too many in one area versus another, both geographically and just practice area? I have a lot of friends from vet school who aren’t in practice anymore. And so, I think that’s been another trend that we’ve seen just in the overall veterinary population, is people who are still working as veterinarians but in different capacities. So I think it’ll be interesting to see where these vet students that are in school now, where they’re going to go. Are they going to end up in clinical practice? Are they going to end up out in industry or academia, or where they’re going to go?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I had a guest on a nutritionist just recently, and she was telling about being in general practice for a while and then ultimately feeling stuck and then doing a non-traditional residency. And now she works with Hills, and it’s just been… Yeah, I see a uptick in that. And I’m curious, I don’t know if you have data to support veterinarians working in larger numbers outside of practice or more non-traditional veterinary roles, but just anecdotally, I don’t know if it’s the circles that we run in, a lot of our friends do things that are not in the clinic anymore, or if that’s a more nationwide trend. I don’t know, do you have insight?

Dr. Kate Boatright:
I don’t know that I have specific data. I mean, obviously I hear lots of conversations about, “Hey, it’s really hard to hire.” I’ve been in multiple small animal and emergency hospitals that are struggling and short staffed, and I’m in a pretty rural area, so sometimes it’s hard to recruit. People don’t want to come live in the boondocks, Western Pennsylvania. But I think the people that I talk to either are moving out of practice or, like I did where I work part-time now in practice, and that was so that I could have more time to do all this other stuff that I do. So I think there’s a movement of that as well. The way I’ve heard it explained is, looking at veterinary working hours as opposed to just the number of veterinarians.

Dr. Andy Roark:
That makes sense. So we talked about increased enrollment. I think the LMU model of turning out multiple classes per year is really interesting. We’ve seen this in the Caribbean schools. I think some of the Caribbean schools were doing three classes a year.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Is that true? Okay. I thought that was at least true.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
I’m pretty sure it is. Yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. So it’s not unheard of. It’s not unprecedented. It’s unprecedented to see a school in the United States doing it, but there seems to be a demand.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah. Well, I think a big limiting factor is just the size of the school building and the space. I was reading an article recently where LMU announced its increased extra class, and they built their school to accommodate that. They’ve got the space to put people. I remember, at Penn there are three large lecture halls, so there is one for first year, second year and third year. You’d have to create new space if you were going to add another class, and I think that’s the case in a lot of the older schools.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Have you ever been to LMU? Have you been out there?

Dr. Kate Boatright:
I haven’t. I haven’t. One of my goals is to get to all the vet schools, so they are on my list, but I have not made it yet.

Dr. Andy Roark:
All right. So I’ve been to Penn a number of times, obviously. And Penn, for those people who haven’t been there, it’s in downtown Philadelphia. It is in a develop city. How do you expand Penn? I have no idea. You would have to acquire some real estate that already exists that someone else vacated, and they would have to be ready to leave. I don’t know how you grow Penn. However, LMU is in the middle of nowhere. And I say that with love, it is absolutely gorgeous. I mean, it’s right on the line of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky. It’s up in that really rural mountainous area. I think it’s Cumberland Gap area. The hiking and backpacking is gorgeous. It is just absolutely pristine, beautiful. I want to go up there, I want to spend time up there and just walk around, because I love being outside.
That said, there’s stuff in there, I mean, I’ve been up there a number of times, and I really like it, but they have room to expand, is a generous way to say it, a 100%. There is very little holding them back from just expanding their facilities. And so, that’s where they are. The other thing is, they have a mindset to expand and they’re willing to expand. So I went up there a couple of years ago, and I’ll never forget, it was when LMU was just getting going. And I went up there, and they had been in practice for two years, so they only had first and second year students.
And I remember getting the tour and walking around the school. And Kate, there were big sections of the school where the rooms were empty except they had purchased everything they needed, and it was all piled in the middle of the room and wrapped in plastic. And half the school was just empty rooms with chairs and tables and microscopes wrapped in plastic. It was the oddest thing. It was like someone was setting up a laboratory like some science fiction place. Anyway, but they were in it and they were like, “Yeah, we’re doing this now with the expectation that people will be here.” And they have just continued to grow. That school in general has continued to grow. So anyway, they’re just doing interesting, innovative things, two classes a year.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Absolutely.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I’ll be interested to see what it looks like. Let’s talk about the demographic shift. So we’re talking about enrollment and where that’s coming from. Tell me the story of demographics in vet medicine.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah. I think that we’re all pretty aware. I could remember being on the floor of the ABA House of Delegates back in, I think it would’ve been 2021, the first time we met back in person, and watching the video that was released from the Diversify VetMed, those groups, the Multicultural Vet Med Association, I think was spearheaded, and just watching that video of the experiences that people in vet med had, had of being excluded, racism, all of those things.
And I grew up in a pretty diverse area in Pittsburgh. My mom is a minister, and her whole life has been about anti-racism. I grew up in an interracial church. And so, that really spoke to me. And so, I very closely followed the story of improving diversity in vet med. And I think we’re starting to finally see a lot of that work really paying off. And that’s not work that started in 2021, that started well, well before. And so, it’s exciting to see that we’ve had this big increase. I believe it was about 23% of the student body now comes from what has been historically underrepresented backgrounds.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Wow, that’s amazing. That is amazing. Honestly, that feels really rapid, which is great. I know a lot of the groundwork have been laid for a long time, but really, it’s only been probably the Multicultural VetMed Association came onto my radar. I remember it as pre pandemic, but not very pre pandemic that I became aware of those guys and what they were doing. They seemed to have made a significant impact, and that’s a 23% increase. It’s pretty incredible.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah, it might have been the 2020 Summer Delegates meeting, but it was within the last couple years. And just the amazing impact that we’ve seen and the profession really coming together and saying, “Yes, this is important. We need to address this.”

Dr. Andy Roark:
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 a practice owner, a 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 are 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 wrestling 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.
What’s actually driving it? I mean, it’s one thing to say, “Hey, we would like to increase diversity.” And I think that’s the first step. The first step is awareness, and the second step is, what are we actually going to do about it? So tell me about that.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah. So I think that, like I said, this is coming from years of work from a lot of people who recognize the lack of diversity a lot earlier than it was a widespread conversation. And it’s about intentionally mentoring students who are coming from underrepresented backgrounds, making sure that they’re even just aware of this as a profession. I think about, we know that there’s a lot of pets who don’t receive veterinary care, and that whole access to veterinary care conversation. And a lot of those are in lower income communities, in more rural communities. And I think there’s a big overlap between that where people aren’t seeing veterinarians who look like them.
And so, getting out into elementary schools and middle schools and high schools and colleges, and just the more that we expose the profession to the public and with a focus on those from underrepresented backgrounds. And there’s some great work from Possibilities, VetMed, and there’s BlendVet and Journey for Teams from AVMA, all these groups are really working hard to improve diversity and having that exposure in the pipeline.

Dr. Andy Roark:
So Positivity Vet, BlendVet, and what was the last group?

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Possibilities, Blend, and then AVMA just launched, it’s called Journey for Teams, which is a DEI training program for vet clinics. They launched this summer.

Dr. Andy Roark:
All right, so I’ll put links to all three of those in the show notes for people who want to check it out and learn more. Is there anything you were surprised by? Is there anything, I don’t know, that that seemed counterintuitive to you as you looked at the changing demographics in the vet schools?

Dr. Kate Boatright:
The biggest surprise to me wasn’t necessarily that we’re seeing a decrease in male veterinarian students, but in talking to Dr. Greenhill and understanding the larger picture of men in higher education, was really eye-opening for me. Historically, for years, we’ve been seeing a decrease in male enrollment. I remember when I was a kid and I said I wanted to be a veterinarian at five, like most of us, my mom was very intentional about making sure that she only took our pets to veterinarians who were female, because she wanted me to see females in veterinary medicine, because when she was a child and said, “I want to be a veterinarian”, everyone said, “You can’t, you’re a woman. Women aren’t in vet med.” And this was in the late ’50s, early ’60s. And so, she went into a completely different profession that was male dominated, which was ministry.
But for her, it was was really important that I saw that from the beginning. I always knew that I wanted to do it and I had that support. By the time I entered school, it had definitely flipped, and women were in the majority at that point, and that trend has just continued where you watch the women increasing and the men decreasing. But when you actually look at the applicant pool, I think it was something like 12% of the applicants were male, but 18% of the class is, so there is an advantage there for men in that population.
But when we look at just the undergraduate student population, it’s also female dominated, so we’re already pulling from a pool that is female dominated. So it’s not so much that vet med is trying to push men out or anything. I think we absolutely need men in our profession. It’s another component of diversity, is that gender component. And they’ve only recently started tracking non-binary and other identifications, so there isn’t as much data on that. But I just think it was really fascinating to me, looking at the broader picture of men in education, I think was one of the really eye-opening things for me.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I think that’s fascinating. There’s, I think it’s the book, it’s called Crisis of Men and Boys. It’s a new book that came out fairly recently. I’ll put a link in the show notes, but it’s gotten a lot of my attention recently. It’s talking about education in men in America. And as we look along, there’s fewer and fewer men who graduate from high school than they used to be. Women graduate from high school at much higher rates. Women are much more likely to be high school valedictorian. Women are much more likely to go to college. Women are much more likely to finish college and they’re more likely to finish college at the top of their class, which obviously sets women up to be much more likely to go into that school, because that school is competitive, it is academically rigorous, is attractive to the strongest students who feel like, “Yeah, I can handle that.”
And so, I do think that we’re a part of this much larger trend, but I do think it’s interesting to us to think about what that means for diversity to have so few men in the profession. I mean, I think about 12% applicants are male, and 50, what, 48% of the population is male? Something like that. Basically 50% of the population is male. That is incredible. And then, one of the things I also think is really interesting, is when you talk to the economist about what feminization of a profession looks like and how that tends to go, and we look at other professions that have skewed to a predominantly female ratio. There are a number of things that come along with that, just that trend in an industry. And you say, “Well, we tend to see lower salaries, and we tend to see things like that.” And again, I do not like that, and that is not a fun story and I don’t want us to be a part of that story. That’s broken.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah. And salaries are implicated as being part of the reason that we see that differential, is that if you were pulling from, we’ve got a smaller pool of men in the STEM majors and they tend to gravitate towards those majors and those disciplines that have higher starting salaries. And unfortunately, Vet Med is not one of them.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
So that is definitely part of the conversation, is how the starting salary impacts the choice of career.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, I think that’s true. I think that there’s a reality and a perception too around the financial security that comes from veterinary medicine. And I think that, that’s one of the things the profession need to keep working on. I want people to look at vet medicine and say, “Yes, if I went there, I would be able to support my family. I would be able to pay my bills.” It don’t think any of us are trying to get rich, but we would like to feel like we’re financially stable. I think the debt problem in vet medicine has hurt us as far as attracting applicants who say, “Well, yeah, I want to have a profession that I know that I’ll be able to send my kids to college.” And I think that those are real realities as you look at where we are. And well, they’re all interconnected, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to attract men back to our profession if we don’t affect the economics of what it means to be a veterinarian.
And maybe that’s a cynical view. Maybe that’s not remotely true. I tend to think it probably is. I don’t know. Where do you think this all goes, Kate? When you look in your crystal ball and you look ahead five years, 10 years, I mean really, yeah, what do you see? I mean, I’m not going to ask you to say we’re going to be this percent underrepresented minorities or this percent male, but I mean, overall trends, is there anything to make us think that…? First of all, I feel good about the increase in diversity that we’re seeing in our profession. I like it. It’s going to be a long road, it’s going to be continuous work, but hey-

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Hard work.

Dr. Andy Roark:
… it feels good to look around… Yeah, it’s going to be hard work, but it does feel good to look around and say, we’re putting one foot in front of the other. I think people have good hearts and they’re doing the work. And I think people generally see the value in increasing diversity in our profession. I felt that most people have been like, “Yeah, we’ve got work to do in this area”, and there’s a lot of benefits for our profession to have this and there’s a lot of benefits for pet owners for us to increase diversity. And so, I’ve been really happy to actually see people put their money where their mouth is and do the work and not just talk about it. So I’m very proud of our profession that way. Yeah, I hope that we continue to see that going. I wonder what’s going to happen with the gender ratio in our profession. I don’t know. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Kate Boatright:
I mean, I think definitely the economics of just where we are right now is a big part of that conversation. And I am far from an economist, but we’ve seen declines in undergraduate enrollment, and unfortunately the people who are most affected by that are our first generation students, our underrepresented backgrounds, our lower income families. And so, I hope that we do continue to see that growth in diversity. And I certainly hope we don’t backslide, but I do worry that with the current economics of undergraduate education that, that’s something we have to be aware of, because no, you don’t have to finish, get your bachelor’s degree to get into vet school, but you at least have to have the classes done.
And so, making sure that, that’s remaining accessible, I think, is big. I hope that we are able to get a little more of an equal balance between male and female students, but we talked about the landscape of that already, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if that trend continues. I’m sure at some point it stabilizes out. I doubt we’re going to get to the point where there’s no men coming in.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I don’t think so.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
But certainly, it’ll be interesting to see where it all ends in the end.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, yeah, and it’s a work in progress. I’ll tell you, I look at my crystal ball, which is highly unreliable. It’s been proven to be in the last few years.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
I’m still waiting for mine. Mine hasn’t come yet.

Dr. Andy Roark:
It got lost. Supposed to get lost in the mail. It’s probably the best thing when that happens. But I see a path in the future that’s more attractive for technicians. I really do, because when you look at the cost of going to college, and people are starting to have real questions about, what’s the return on investment on a college education? And then you look at the debt load and vet school, I think that if technicians become more empowered and we leverage our technicians better and we compensate our technicians better, I think that, that technician certification, the associates degrees, things where you can do a shorter program, a lower cost to get your credentials, now the compensation has to come around to make that worthwhile, but I think it’s a whole lot. It makes more economic sense to have more support staff, more para professionals that are well trained and well compensated, than it does to keep growing veterinarians, which is a long, super expensive path.
So I suspect that we’ll continue to see, I hope we’ll continue to see more certified credentialed technicians and we’ll be using them more, and they’ll be better compensated. I think when we look at the vet schools, I’m optimistic with the rising salaries for veterinarians right now. So starting salaries of vets have gone up. There’s been a lot of change, and I hope that, that will continue on. It definitely makes the debt more palatable when vets have more earning power and are starting at higher salaries. So that helps.
But I don’t know, Kate. I don’t see the debt problem going away, I’m not seeing anything really effective. There was a student loan forgiveness program that came out that felt like a drop in the bucket to me, without really addressing the underlying problem. So yeah, I look at those economics and I go, I don’t know what we’re going to do about making veterinary medicine more attractive to be a stronger magnet. But I really think, that’s my goal is, if we can make this profession financially attractive to people, I think we sort a lot of problems out. I think we have to continue to fight against the debt problem and we have to keep working for doctor and support staff compensation, and balance that with keeping care affordable, but I am optimistic.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Right, absolutely. I agree. I think definitely, I love working with students and mentoring and seeing them grow. And I work with a lot of pre-vet students and watching them get into vet school. I now have some that have graduated that I wrote recommendation letters for, which makes me feel super old. And I realize I’m still very early in my career, but it’s exciting to see that changing landscape. And yeah, I think like said, the big challenge is going to be making it an attractive profession and a solvent profession, while still keeping our care the way it is for all of our patients.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I agree. There’s a shared glory in writing a rec letter for somebody who gets into vet school in there.

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah, it really is.

Dr. Andy Roark:
It’s just like, I get the [inaudible 00:31:00] in their glow. I love it. I’m like, “I know I didn’t really do anything.” He like, “You did all the work, but I wrote a nice note that went with you, and so I’m going to…” Exactly right. Exactly right. So that always makes me feel good. Kate Boatright, thanks so much for being here. Where can people find you? Where can they read your writing and keep up with what you’re doing?

Dr. Kate Boatright:
Yeah. I am on Instagram. It’s @writetheboat, it’s W-R-I-T-E, the boat. I am on Facebook and LinkedIn at Kate Boatright. And then I do have a website, www.writetheboat.com. Again, it’s W-R-I-T-E, the boat. And that’s where all of my upcoming speaking, all of my articles are archived there. And soon we’ll be launching a mentorship program for practices through there.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Very great. Very great. Well, congratulations, Kate. Thanks so much for being here. Guys, thanks for tuning in. You guys take care of yourself, we’ll talk to you next week. And that is our show. Guys, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Thanks to Kate Boatright for being here. As always, if you enjoyed the show, there’s nothing else you could do that would help me more than just sharing it with your friends. I love when people write honest reviews. Wherever you get your podcast, Apple Podcast is a big place that people look when they’re looking for a podcast, so that helps a lot. But honestly, just if you think it’s good, send it to other people who might also think it’s good. I’d super appreciate it. Anyway guys, that’s what I got. Take care of yourselves. Be well. Talk to you later. Bye.

Mira Johnson CPA, CVPM joins Dr. Andy Roark to discuss embezzlement in veterinary medicine. In an AAHA survey, 86% of respondents said employees had stolen from their clinic. Why does this happen so commonly in our industry? Who is responsible and what motivates the behavior? What can practices do about it?

You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

LINKS

JF Bell Group: https://cpasforveterinarians.com/

Practice Owner Summit: https://unchartedvet.com/practice-owner-summit-2022/

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

Mira Johnson holds a Masters’ Degree in Financial Management and Accounting is a CPA, and is a Certified Veterinary Practice Manager. She is a managing partner in the JF Bell Group, CPAs for Veterinarians. Mira’s passion is helping veterinarians to start, manage and grow the practice of their dreams. She embraces the use of apps to help automate the business side of their practice. Her articles about financial automation and employee motivation have been published in Today’s Veterinary Business and dvm360.

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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 got a great one for you today. It’s going to be eye-opening. It’s going to freak some people out. Mira Johnson is with me. She is a CPA and a CVPM. You can hang on, and we’ll talk to you about what all those letters mean, if you’re not familiar. She’s an accountant who works with veterinary practices, and she is talking about embezzlement.
We get in and we talk a little bit about embezzlement, and what it looks like. Boy, the back half of this episode is just her telling stories. It’s amazing. It’ll freak you out. But, I think we come out at a really good place of, “Hey, there’s some things that you can do to set up your practice, and to protect yourself, and just to be aware of.” Yeah, I think it’s a really good, interesting episode. It’s going to breeze by. She is wonderful. Gang, 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. Mira Johnson, thanks for being here.

Mira Johnson:
Thank you for having me.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, it’s my pleasure. I became aware of you through your writing. You write for dvm360, you write for Today’s Veterinary Practice or Today’s Veterinary Business?

Mira Johnson:
Today’s Veterinary Business.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Wonderful. I became aware of you because of your writing there. I like a lot of your stuff. I was like, “Wow, who is this who’s writing this neat stuff that I don’t see?” You have a really interesting background. You are a CPA and a Certified Vet Practice Manager, a CVPM. How did you come to have a CPA and a CVPM? How did that happen?

Mira Johnson:
The CPA was definitely my passion. I am very organized and I love the numbers. Then I joined JF Bell Group, which is the CPA firm that I work for, and they had passion for veterinarian industry. So, I fall into it. We had a lot of veterinarians, a lot of friends in there. Started going to the national conferences. That’s when I saw actually first time, you talking about management practices and all sorts of things that I was just opening the door to a different world and I wanted to learn more. So I’m really eager to learn, self-driven self-improvement is a big part of me. And when I discover the credentials, a couple years ago I was talking and I said, “Well, how could I improve myself and what can I learn to getting the credentials?” So it wasn’t much of I just want to be a CVPPM, it was more like what can I learn along the journey?

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Mira Johnson:
So that was my drive.

Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s awesome. That’s really cool.

Mira Johnson:
I just got it a couple of years ago. Well, I think it was this year actually.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, well congratulations. That’s wonderful. I love the CVPM. I think it’s such a great program and it’s wonderful to see people working in practices and learning the nuts and the bolts. I have nuts and bolts questions for you today. I want to talk about an article that you wrote on embezzlement, it’s called Sticky Situations. It was in a recent issue of the Today’s Veterinary Business. And you talked about embezzlement and you talked about the frequency with which embezzlement happens in vet practices. Can you start at a high level with that? How common is embezzlement in private practice?

Mira Johnson:
So based on ADMA research, it shows that one in nine practices do experience embezzlement or theft from employees. So that doesn’t even include any other theft outside of your clients or burglaries. This is definitely just employee related theft and I think it’s, a lot of people say, “Wow, really, one in nine? That seems like a huge number.” And for the rest of the businesses the number is still high but it’s 75%. So definitely the vet industry is much bigger. And I think Marsha Heinke, she did a study and in her studies it was based on, because most of the vet practices are family based, they have a lot of close relationships or they’re small. So that’s where I think the higher numbers are coming from potentially.

Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s interesting. I was going to ask you that. Why do you think this stands out? So tell me about, you think because they’re family based, why do you say that? What does that mean?

Mira Johnson:
So I don’t necessarily mean just family, close family, but our firm specializes in small clinics and the small practices. So we do see a lot of, it’s a dad with two sons, it was always their dream and there’s a son that stole from them, so it was crushed dreams. It does happen in the family settings. A lot of my best friend is now my practice manager, so very close relationships, which I think in the big corporations you don’t have those kind of relationships inside of the corporations.

Dr. Andy Roark:
It sounds like maybe there’s a bit more trust and that trust gets exploited a little bit more. I don’t know, I could see that. Just thinking about it, why would vet practices be so common and say, “Well we were trusting a lot.” We tend to see the good in people sometimes who are in detriments perhaps. Tell me when we talk about embezzlement, what are we talking about here? This is a big term, just making it clear examples of investment. Are we talking about people manipulating credit card machines? Are we talking about taking cash out of the cash register? What does embezzlement in a small animal clinical practice look like?

Mira Johnson:
So pretty much all and above, I think the statistics shows one in three are monetary, which means that would be the cash stall and the credit cards, some money related, but the two out three is non-monetary, which means it’s the inventory equipment, pretty much the food that walks out of your back door that the employees take home with them for their pets, payroll paddings.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Gotcha. No, that totally makes sense. So I’m parsing in some of mine. Yeah, so the majority is definitely inventory walking away. Okay. I get that. You talk a little bit in your article about ideas about why this seems to happen and how people rationalize it. So most of us, we look at people that we work with or we look at our family, our best friend who’s the practice manager and we go, “They would never steal from our company.” You have some interesting ideas about how people mentally get their head around that. Talk me through that.

Mira Johnson:
Yeah. And this is the part that I really enjoy talking the most about because I think a lot of people don’t have the mindset that, “Hey, this is going to happen to me eventually.” There’s a good chance it will unfortunately. And the rationalization. There is three things that have to be present for the fraud or embezzlement to occur. One is rationalization and that is that I will tell in my head … I don’t think there’s very many people who go around and it’s like, “I just want to steal from somebody. Let me find somebody who can steal from.”

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Mira Johnson:
That’s a small percentage of people. Most of us will go around and try to do the good in the world, at least that’s what I believe in. And there will be instances when we can rationalize our actions. I can see that you are very successful practice and you have all these resources. Man, if I would have all these money, I would help all those stray cats or something. So you start taking money and putting it into this nonprofit that maybe you founded or maybe you just giving them money so you can help the greater good. In your mind it’s justifiable Or then that can be the malicious, “The inflation is huge. I can’t even not put gas in my car anymore. I should have got a raise last year, so I’m going to take my raise because I deserve it.”

Dr. Andy Roark:
That makes sense.

Mira Johnson:
The rationalization is a big thing.

Dr. Andy Roark:
So rationalization is the first piece, what’s the second piece?

Mira Johnson:
The second piece is, oh there’s opportunity, but let talk about the financial pressure, of course. So there must be a reason why you want the money. And lots of people when they say, “Oh, financial pressure,” I don’t know how many people, they’re gambling or I don’t know how many people that are drag addicts. I don’t need to worry about that. It’s this big thing that people usually tend to think about but it doesn’t have to be. So it can be keeping it with Jones, the coworker got a new car, I want something better.
They want on this fancy vacation, it’s all over the Instagram and Facebook and I want to prove them that I can do the same thing. So there might be a different financial pressures, it might be as simple as that I’m already accustomed to some lifestyle. My spouse lost a job and now I’m kind of left with bills to cover and I can’t afford them because I have all these monthly recurring payments, which is very common for Americans to have all these car payment, mortgage and subscription for anything and everything you can think about. So to keeping up might be hard when there’s a loss of income.
So that’s the financial pressure. And the last one is the opportunity, which I think this is the part that we all need to pay better attention in the clinic because this is the part that we can influence. I cannot change your vision of I need to keep up with Jones different, I can’t really influence that and I can’t influence your rationalization necessarily. But I can influence the opportunity, if you do have the chance to take from me.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Right. Talk to me about how we do that. Yeah.

Mira Johnson:
I think in the family business or where you have long trusted employees, the thing where you’re getting exposed or your clinic gets exposed is where suddenly you trust a lot and then you offload all these tasks, right? Because you trust them. So pretty soon they’re running the payroll for you and they know you don’t review it because you don’t have time. Or maybe that there isn’t a procedure for receiving inventory or purchasing inventory. So those are the little things that they will start noticing. And if there is a financial pressure and if there is the rationalization, they see the opportunity and they can seize on the opportunity. So if you have strong internal controls and protect yourself, you’re minimizing them. And I know there was a lot there.

Dr. Andy Roark:
No, this is good. So I want to start to parse this apart a little bit. So you talk about trusting and delegating. Where are the big opportunities for embezzlement? So what are the things that I need to be careful when I delegate away or places where I want to make sure I have good internal control specifically?

Mira Johnson:
So when it comes to cash handling, that’s one of the things that we see that most of the practices lack their internal control. Where the receptionist, some of them don’t even count the cash in the end of the day. It’s like, “Oh, once a week I’ll just take whatever cash is in there and I deposit in the bank.” Well there should be a daily reconciliation in the end of the day and it shouldn’t be the receptionist who takes the money to the bank. And there should be some checks in the background. So if the receptionist is the one who does the daily closeout and creates the deposit, it should be taken into the safe. And then the owner or somebody else who is not handling the cash should take it to the bank. And then again, somebody else who is not doing either or should do the bookkeeping records and reconciliations and stuff like that in the end of the month or weekly basis.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, cool. And then it seems like inventory would also be on that same path if we’re talking about two-thirds of embezzlement is it sounds like inventory controls are probably more important than a lot of people think.

Mira Johnson:
Yes, the purchasing and accepting. So it shouldn’t be the same person that can purchase the product and receive the product because then there is room for altered records. So I can say, “Well I purchased seven things and we receive seven things,” but we only received six or five and the rest I just took home.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Got you. Yeah. That never would’ve occurred to me. That was definitely a blind spot. It makes total sense when you say it that way. Okay. So any other areas specifically that we want to make sure? The cash handling totally makes sense. Purchasing and receiving totally makes sense. Other areas where we should make sure we have good control systems?

Mira Johnson:
Yeah, I think there’s a lots of new things that surfacing currently, but I get surprised by it. So for example, most of the people probably now use Vetco for their purchasing. And Vetco has a great thing that they reward you with this gift card, gift cards, you can redeem a gift card.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Mira Johnson:
I would encourage every owner …

Dr. Andy Roark:
I see where this is going now, okay.

Mira Johnson:
… to check where the gift cards are going because sometimes you just don’t see that $25 was redeemed and where it went. So if they can intercept the mail and take the gift card. So that’s one. And you know think, “Well that’s $25 bucks Mira, who cares? It’s not a big deal,” but it usually starts small.

Dr. Andy Roark:
It adds up. Yeah.

Mira Johnson:
Yeah. And then it adds up.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Mira Johnson:
And the average is average theft in veterinary medicine is $200,000. And a lot of people are like, “Well I would think I would see the $200,000,” but it takes about 24 months to catch the person that’s stealing. And one of the reasons is because they start small and then they get crazy.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay, so what you’re saying is usually by the time that embezzlement of gets caught or reported, the average amount we’re talking about is $200,000. Is that correct?

Mira Johnson:
Yes.

Dr. Andy Roark:
And it usually starts small and then we see larger. I a hundred percent see that as people would say, “I’d never do this,” and then they break the ice and maybe every time it gets a little bit more and comfort levels go up. But wow, $200,000. That’s amazing.
Guys, I just want to jump in here real quick with one quick announcement. If you’re a practice owner, the Uncharted Practice Owner Summit is coming, it is me and my friend Stephanie Goss, the practice management guru. We are going to be leading that, heading that up. It is in person in Greenville, South Carolina. If you are a practice owner and you’re like, “Man, I want to go to a thing that’s only practice owners and work with other practice owners,” head over to unchartedvet.com and check out what we’re doing. Guys, that’s it from me. Let’s get back into the episode.
How do practices tend to catch onto these things? Do you have a sense of that? When these things are brought to light, how does that often happen?

Mira Johnson:
It can come from different sources. So it can be an employee that saw something and came to you and said something. It can come from a third party. So for example, usually when we prepare financial statements or reports, we do discuss it with the business owners and we go through it. So for example, on one of the instances we notice that the anesthesia costs was going up and up and up while the revenue was pretty much flat. So I brought it up to doctor and the doctor said, “Well what are you doing in there? There’s no way I’m spending this much money on anesthesia.” And when he looked into it, he was a bunch of Dolorex and he said, “Well I can’t get use this in a whole year.” So then he went to control substance log and that’s how it got discovered.
So that came from a third party. Also, I know that there was some merchants, like credit card processors that came back and said, “Hey,” this happened actually closed by in Idaho that the receptionist was a very clever one and when the purchases was made, she refunded it or not refunded, she returned it. So she would return product, but the product was physically returned back so you don’t miss anything but the refund, she issued it to a different form of payment. So all these purchases are coming for the business credit card and are being refunded to her personal bank account.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Gotcha. Oh wow. Okay. All right. That makes a lot of sense. What steps do practices usually take if they know or if they suspect that this is going on? So I imagine being a business owner and let’s just say that there’s something and you say, “Oh, this has come to my attention,” where do people go from it? Is it straight to the police? How do people report this? What’s the mechanism for that?

Mira Johnson:
Yeah, that’s a great question. It depends. So we try to always advise our clients to definitely not alert the person that you think it’s on it and also don’t alert the rest of your staff because it’s not always just one person. There’s instances when it’s two people or three people. So if you do have the purchasing and receiving separated, maybe those two got together and they’re taking advantage of that. So definitely don’t try to spread the news across or try to figure out. We also try to say don’t change anything yet as far as the records, because you want to build a history.
If you see something, you can look in the history and if there’s already you can pinpoint it, then great, you can move forward. But if there’s just small things, maybe just installing a camera in the practice, if it’s a cash being stolen from the client, fake refunds and stuff like that. So from there you could, so let’s just say you have established a history, then you can contact your insurance, your lawyer, because you’ll have to let that employee go. So you want to make sure that you do it correctly so you don’t violate any other problems along the ways. And then we always encourage to prosecute. So there’s tons of practices who have all the evidence and they just want to be done.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I understand that.

Mira Johnson:
They’re hurt and it’s a terrible feeling because it is your long term employee or it is your family member. And I think in these instances, I’ve seen so many people cry and just be ashamed that that’s what they allowed to happen. And the thing is that there is all these, what we call red flags. So there, there’s the employee complain, the employee did this and that and you usually don’t see it or they’re very subtle until it’s all gone. And when it comes down as a whole group, you can come together and you’re like, “Man, how do we not see it? We’re such an idiots.” People just beat themselves up.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I would. I would be so brutal on myself, I totally can see this. I want to talk about this just because I can see myself as the kindly veterinarian because I tend to trust people and think people are doing things for the best. And I would be embarrassed, I would feel so ashamed that this happened and “Oh, I can’t believe that this happened to me,” or that I was so naive and I came completely see people being beaten up. I want to ask you a couple different questions about this, but I want to step back for a second. Let’s talk about these red flags. So you say people start to see red flags. It sounds like a lot of times they see them in retrospect, but what are some of the red flags, aside from your accountant saying, “Hey, we have a problem.” What are some of those red flags that people reflect back on and say, “I wish I had paid more attention to that?”

Mira Johnson:
Yeah, it depends on a position, but some of the red flags are, for example, that the employee never takes vacation because they’re trying to stay in where they are. Meaning if I’m the one who, let’s just say that I do accounts receivable fraud, which would mean that you come and pay and I say you didn’t, but I have the cash now, then I have to record it, anyway it’s called floating accounts receivables. If somebody else intertwines in that role, it’s easier to discover, but if you are in there, it’s much easier to attain because when the customer calls, you’re like, “Yeah, I know you paid. Yeah, we just didn’t record it yet. It’ll be their next statement,” and then you make a note of it and you record that payment when somebody else comes in. And that’s a complicated case, but other things can be [inaudible 00:20:25]-

Dr. Andy Roark:
No. I get what you’re saying.

Mira Johnson:
Okay, so other red flags can be that the person is always the nagging one, right? They don’t like something, they’re talking about the practices, “I can’t believe how much money the owner has. And we didn’t get any bonuses this year. Did you see how much it’s charging for rabies shot? Did you see how much it actually costs to buy it?” There’s that talk in the background maybe. Also, the obvious that they come to the practice and they have brand new car that’s completely out of their lifestyle. Those are the more obvious ones.
But we had one that at the clinic that the doctor’s like, “I can’t believe I didn’t see this. There was a bloody needle in the ladies bathroom and the employee walked out without a sock on her foot just completely high.” And you were just feeling bad for the person because she had some other problems and you look back, and you were like, “Well, that’s obvious,” but it wasn’t.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah.

Mira Johnson:
Because she had lack of sleep. Her husband kick her out of the house the night before. So it all makes sense to you because you’re this compassionate person, you just go and buy her coffee and pretty soon you’re just like, “Wait, what just happened?”

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, wait a second. Yeah, I can believe it. We tie ourselves up in knots, all that stuff makes sense. Do you have any resources that you recommend? Where can people learn more if they’re a small business owner or they just want to investigate more or try to understand more how they can protect themselves, what out there can be helpful for them?

Mira Johnson:
Yeah, I think the first thing that I would do is to look into the internal controls. And if you have no clue what that means, that’s fine. You at least take the time that you’re trying to understand. So reach out to your CPA or accountant and say, “Hey, how can I improve my process?” And just explain what you do and they will give you some suggestions on what can be done differently. So I would start there. And then one of the things that I always tell people is to start with yourself. So if I as a practice owner comes to the clinic and take the dog food and just walk out in the back door and it doesn’t go through any system, you’re just showing that it’s possible to get out of the clinic with a bag of food with no trace.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I never would’ve thought that, but it totally makes sense.

Mira Johnson:
Inventory counting, count your inventory, utilize your practice management software. There’s great technologies out there that you can utilize. I know it takes time and effort that there’s just so much that you can do and automate to protect yourself. So to learn more, you can reach out to your practice management software rep and said, “Hey, I would like to start tracking all the inventory in the software. Where do I start? How do I do this? I know there is some restrictions on permissions. How can I do this? So there’s only one person that can receive,” or whatever, how many you want, but certain people that can receive the product and some people who can do the purchase order. So your accountant, practice management software, the vendors have some great ideas too. You would not believe some drug reps, they tell us some crazy stories about how people resell the free samples to the practice and then pocket the money. So there’s also-

Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh wow. That’s crazy.

Mira Johnson:
Since I’ve been talking about fraud, there’s just all these people who come to me. We were just speaking at the Western this year in Vegas, and there was a guy who stood up and said, “I want to share a story. It doesn’t matter how it happens, but he has tears in his eyes and he said, “It was my best friend, we grew up together. I gave him a job, he was paid well. We went having picnics on the weekends.” And it was $150 or whatever. I can’t remember the exact amount. And that’s just so hurtful to me that you have to experience that and then you beat yourself up.
If I can leave you with one thing is to please don’t beat yourself up. I think it happens to the best of us. And another thing is, please don’t panic because there is things that now you would be like, “Oh, my receptionist just said that her utility is going to be shut down because she can make the payment.” So it shouldn’t be like, “Oh my gosh, she’s going to steal for me.” It should be more like a antenna should come up, ding, that’s a red flag. But it doesn’t mean because she’s asking for advance that now she’s going to take from me.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, when you start going down this path, it’s easy to start imagining. You’re like, “Fraud is everywhere.” Yeah. I love this approach. I love just talking about that it’s real. I think most of us just don’t have any idea or we don’t ever want to think that could happen in our practices. And so I really appreciate you coming in and talking about it and you really humanize it and make it go like, “Okay, I get it. I can definitely see how it happened.” I think I really like the phrase keeping honest people honest, and I think that that’s how I like to look at these things is to say, “I don want to live in a world of fear or mistrusting people.” At the same time, it’s just smart to build good systems that first of all, they help you run a better business and a better practice. And then also they just keep honest people honest and you just never have to deal with these things. And so I love your approach as you lay these steps out.

Mira Johnson:
I didn’t mean to be completely a downer, like, “Oh my gosh, you going to have to do all this and don’t trust anyone.”

Dr. Andy Roark:
I know.

Mira Johnson:
I do want to say one more thing and that is there’s a saying in my homeland, I’m from Slovakia originally, that we say, [foreign language 00:26:19] which means trust, but check.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I love that.

Mira Johnson:
Which means you can delegate all these things, but you have to have a system in place that you can just verify that’s happening.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I love it. I love it, I love it.

Mira Johnson:
Because the people are the biggest asset that the veterinary clinic has in my opinion, because they are the ones who will lift you up.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Mira, where can people find you? Tell me about the firm that you’re with. Tell me about the work that you do. Where can people learn more from you?

Mira Johnson:
Yeah. So our firm is called JF Bell Group. We’re a CPA for veterinarians. You can find us on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram.

Dr. Andy Roark:
I’ll put a link in the show notes as well. Yeah.

Mira Johnson:
Awesome. Yeah, CPAs for veterinarians and we do help small practices, startups to grow, start their practice of their dreams and help them manage it.

Dr. Andy Roark:
Very nice. Thanks so much for being here. Guys, take care of yourself. Thanks for being here.

Mira Johnson:
Thank you.

Dr. Andy Roark:
And that is our show, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. A big thanks to Mira for being here. Guys, if you enjoy the show, there’s a couple things you can do. If you’re watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button, that’s wonderful. If you’re not, give me a give me a rating, give me a review wherever you get your podcast. Apple Podcast is a big place. It really is how people find the show. But yeah, I always love your feedback and it’s just a kind thing that you can do if you’re liking what we’re doing. Anyway, gang, take care of yourself, be well. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

Stephanie Goss:
I just want to take a quick second and give a big shout out to our friends at Banfield Pet Hospital for making the transcriptions of this podcast possible. The podcast transcripts are brought to you thanks to a generous gift from Banfield Pet Hospital, which is striving to increase accessibility and inclusivity all across the veterinary profession. If you would love to find out more about the DEI initiatives for Banfield, you can head on over to the link in the show notes.