Many patients may be missing one or more of the preventive care vaccines and services you recommend, simply because the reminder has not yet been set up.
“Patient Compliance” measures whether a patient is getting the vaccines and services you’ve designated for them in reminders.
But, what percent of your active patients are missing a preventive care vaccine or service that is core or advised in your standard of care…because a reminder hasn’t even been set up for it yet. This is a very critical missing metric: S.I.R. your Standard-of-care Implementation Rate. Here is an example:
(A SIR report on your practice is available for free by requesting it from info@healthier-pets.com)
You may have a strong 50-70% 90-day compliance on Distemper Vaccines. But, if only 72% of your active canine patients have a distemper reminder on file… that means that a hidden nearly 30% of your patients are missing key preventive care you may have in your core recommendations.
(This analysis, of course, is tied to the vaccines/services that your practice considers core or advised. And, obviously some vaccines are contingent on the lifestyle of each particular patient.)
Filling the Gaps – 2 options
1. Catchup
It can easily happen that a particular vaccine/service just never got set up for a particular pet, especially as a patient ages and their preventive care needs change.
a. One common option for filling in missing preventive care, is considering, with every visit, what additional core/advised care and reminders should be added. (It might be helpful to have an exam-time prompt or checklist for the vet or staff showing what is missing for that patient. See article on “New In-Clinic Tool to Promote Preventive Care”.)
b. Another option is that you could have your staff go through your patients and add reminders for the missing vaccines/services. (your reminder service should be able to provide a list of your active patients and any core/advised services they are missing)
2. Automated Addition of Services as “Also Recommended”
However, you may well not have the staff time available to go back patient-by-patient and add the missing preventive care. Very understandable!!
As an alternative, some reminder services let your practice designate what vaccines/services your practice considers core or advised. And, then automatically added those missing items as “Also Recommended”.
Example: So, if Bella has never had a reminder set up for a Distemper Vaccine, but you consider distemper a core or advised vaccine, Distemper is added as an “Also Recommended” vaccine to Bella’s reminder.
In this way, you can spot and fill-in the key preventive care you consider important for the health of your patients. And, over time you are boosting your Standard-of-care Implementation and, most importantly, the preventive health of your patients!!