Staffing in a veterinary observe is a vital lever that may be adjusted to elevate productiveness. If the ratio of non-veterinarian workforce members to veterinarians is simply too excessive, it will end in folks being underutilized, and weigh on the observe’s bills. However having too few supporting workforce members might pressure—and cut back—your veterinarians’ means to supply care to sufferers and purchasers.
To know whether or not you will have the optimum ratio of non-veterinarians to veterinarians in your care workforce, you may evaluate your observe’s staffing ranges in opposition to revealed benchmarks. Deal with this in quarter-hour or much less this manner:
- Depend the full variety of hours labored by the non-veterinarians in your care workforce in a mean week. Embrace each full-time and part-time veterinary technicians, veterinary assistants, customer support representatives, and all different workers within the observe, aside from veterinarians.
- Depend the full variety of veterinarian hours labored in a mean week. Once more embody each full-time and part-time veterinarians.
- Calculate the ratio of non-veterinarian to veterinarian hours by dividing the full help workforce hours by the veterinarian hours.
Right here’s an instance
Take into account a veterinary observe that has one veterinary technician working 40 hours per week, one veterinary assistant working 35 hours per week, one customer support consultant working 35 hours per week, one kennel assistant working 20 hours per week, and one observe supervisor working 30 hours per week; this sums to a complete of 160 hours labored per week by the non-veterinarians within the observe.
This observe additionally has one veterinarian, working 40 hours per week. Meaning we are able to divide the 160 non-veterinarian workforce hours by the 40 veterinarian hours, and we discover that the observe’s non-veterinarian to veterinarian employees ratio is 4 to 1.
How do you evaluate?
When you’ve calculated your observe’s ratio, you may then assess it in opposition to revealed benchmarks.
One current instance used information from the AVMA’s 2024 Observe Homeowners Survey and was offered on the 2024 Veterinary Economics and Enterprise Discussion board by Frederic Ouedraogo PhD and Dr. Peter Weinstein. They checked out companion and blended animal hospitals with the very best income per full-time-equivalent veterinarian, and located that the optimum ratio of non-veterinarian workforce members to veterinarians was 5 to 1. In different phrases, every full-time-equivalent veterinarian was most effectively supported by between 4 and 5 different full-time-equivalent veterinary workforce members.
In addition they discovered these optimum ratios for particular workforce members:
- Veterinary technicians to veterinarians: 1 to 1
- Veterinary assistants to veterinarians: 2 to 1
Whereas these ratios have been discovered to be optimum from the analysis performed, it’s additionally necessary to acknowledge that each veterinary observe is exclusive. Elements inside your observe might imply your optimum ratio just isn’t precisely 5 to 1 for non-veterinarians to veterinarians, or it will not be constantly the identical—for instance, if working round part-time schedules or trip weeks. Realizing these ratios inside your observe in a traditional week can present steerage on how you can stability schedules and clinic wants.
Evaluating your observe’s staffing construction can help you establish areas for potential enchancment earlier than shifting to deeper clinic effectivity ways. By getting your staffing ratio proper, you may be sure that veterinarians have the help in place to supply nice affected person care, cut back the chance of burnout, and increase observe productiveness.
