Set Up Your Office

Setting up your home office has probably occupied the least of your worries. Yet this is the place where you will be doing all your mundane tasks of paperwork, storing inventory, writing up client files, and so on. You will use this area every day.
First, be sure that you are allowed to have a home office in your neighborhood. See Licenses for the details about city or county business licenses you may need.
Instead of just making the kitchen table into a makeshift desk, spend the time to create a real office for yourself. Although it needn’t be large, it must be comfortable and conducive to working. What this means varies with the individual. Some of us can work in the midst of chaos, and others need quiet surroundings.
The best choice is an area that you can clearly demarcate so that you and your family know when you are working and when you are not. Even if you live alone, you will better balance your work and personal lives if you can psychologically separate your office space from the rest of your home.
 

Where Will Your Office Be?

Before you narrow down your office location, you should consider your space and atmosphere (noise, light) needs. You will need space for your client files; your computer; your telephone (and a fax machine); a postal scale; writing space; storage for books; shelf space for inventory; desk space for mailing out prescriptions and other items; and a comfortable reading area. You may also need space for your small laboratory and electrical and phone outlets. You may want to be able to lock the room or a cabinet within it. What other space or mechanical requirements might be necessary?
Where can you find the space and environment you desire? Consider these choices:

• Empty a closet and install a desk and shelves inside
• Install a long, narrow desk in an extra-wide hallway, or a corner desk in a large stairway landing.
• Use an extra bedroom
• Convert attic or basement space
• Use a loft
• Create a work corner in the living room or family room (but keep in mind your ability to get work done in the face of family noise and inevitable interruptions!)
• In a garage or shed: Can you insulate, add electrical outlets, put in a desk, and make your garage or shed into an adequate office?

Where shouldn’t your office be?

• The kitchen table: where will you eat? Even if you live alone, this arrangement will always make you feel as if you have a temporary work arrangement.
• Your bedroom: Leave yourself this space for rest and relaxation.
• Anywhere that there will be lots of family traffic going by, encouraging interruptions.
• Anywhere that family noise will disrupt your work: the dishwasher or washing machine, a lawn mower outside, your dog barking, your kids playing, and so on.
• Anywhere that your business noise and work will disrupt your family. For example, is your business telephone answering machine in a place where its noise will disrupt the family when you are “off” work? It’s hard to not pick up the phone when you hear it ring and can hear a person leaving a message. Turn the ringer off, and the answering machine volume down, when you are off work if this is a problem.
• Anywhere you aren’t comfortable. Consider this: do you like windows, or does a view distract you from work? What is the lighting like? Is there a glare on your computer screen? Is the room too hot or too cold much of the time?

Local zoning code sometimes prohibits a home office with a separate entrance. See Licenses section for details.
Make a list of the potential places for your office, and the pros and cons of each. Consider the location, the area’s shape and amount of space, the lighting, electrical outlets, the noise situation, and any other attributes.
 

Where Will You Store Your Inventory?

Keep controlled drugs in a locked container that you can easily move from your car to your home. Keep a locked cabinet in your home for these items. Consider installing a car alarm.
You don’t have to have all possible medications in your car. Instead, you can keep some inventory at home and mail necessary items to your clients as the need arises. Purchase padded envelopes for this purpose. Consider writing prescriptions for clients to pick up certain controlled drugs at a pharmacy rather than storing such medications in your home.
Remember that typical auto insurance does not cover equipment or medications kept in your car. Be sure that your business insurance does so.
Review the latest information about DEA regulations and transporting of controlled substances in your vehicle. At the time of this writing, there is confusion about whether that can be allowed at all, in spite of the common occurrence of home euthanasia by house call veterinarians. For more news, visit the AVMA and DVM 360 web sites (www.avma.org and www.dvm360.com) and search “DEA.”
 

Equipping Your Office

The best way to investigate possibilities for equipping your office is to attend a large veterinary meeting and spend a few hours in the exhibit hall. Do this while seminars are in session so that you have more space and less competition for assistance (consider it “business CE!”) Also go to a large discount office supply store near your home. Bring a list with you of the items you want to concentrate on.
Many items you will need are not strictly limited to veterinary offices. For those items, you will pay less if you shop in business and office warehouse stores. However, you won’t get much technical help there, so do your reading ahead of time to determine what you want. Talk to other small business owners (not just veterinarians) to find out what equipment they use, and why they like or dislike various items.
Create your own list, with cost and priority (low, medium, or high) of each item to help you budget and time your purchases.

Essential components of the home office

Make a list of the essential items you will need to purchase for your home office, then consider additional options that will make your work easier.

• Book shelves
• Chair
• Computer and printer
• Desk
• Fax / copier
• Personal security alarm
• Phone answering System
• Phone headset
• Shipping drop box
• Telephone

File cabinet(s) and storage space for:

• Business records
• Inventory
• Client billing system
• Paper, envelopes, supplies
• Patient record system

Optional handy items for your home office

Invest in an ergonomically correct chair. If using a land-line phone, get a telephone shoulder rest or headset to make phone calls more comfortable. When using a cell phone, use the speaker phone feature. A telephone with a hold / mute button is handy for handling interruptions. It is far more professional to put someone on hold than to subject them to noise of your yelling to your spouse or the UPS delivery, “I’ll be right there!”
Get a postal rate card from your post office, and purchase an inexpensive postal scale. This allows you to mail out prescriptions from your home without having to take them to the post office for weighing each time. Buy an assortment of padded envelopes and an assortment of stamps for various weights of mailings.

Answering machine and voice mail

A simple copy / fax / scanner can be purchased for $400-$600. You will save time by being able to make copies at home rather than taking them by the nearest copy shop. Forget fancy machines and expensive maintenance programs. With a simple machine that you don’t use heavily, you don’t need the kind of maintenance that a typical large office requires. Just go to your discount store (Costco, Office Depot) and get an inexpensive machine.

Package delivery

You will need a place that UPS or FedEx can drop off shipments at your home when you aren’t there. Don’t just let them leave boxes on your doorstep. At the very least, that will allow perishables to sit in the sun all day. At worst, your stuff will get ripped off. Make a large wooden box with a lid that you put in the side or back yard. Or leave your garage door unlocked and have boxes left there. Make orders on days that will result in delivery on a day you are usually at home. Medical equipment Will you perform any diagnostic tests in your home office? What equipment will you need? (See Inventory.) Will you want to have a small refrigerator just for your veterinary supplies?
Some house call veterinarians perform minor surgical procedures in their home office or in client’s homes. Before you decide to do so, investigate your state practice act to find out if this is legal and if there are specific requirements for a surgical suite. Remember that you must provide care that is on a par with any other veterinary hospital, or you will be subject to malpractice lawsuits. If you want to do surgery and you don’t want to do it in someone else’s hospital, consider purchasing a mobile veterinary unit.
A Minnesota veterinarian’s license was revoked for performing surgeries in client homes, with deficiencies listed as inadequate lighting, use of cold sterilization instead of autoclaved surgical equipment, lack of gas anesthesia, lack of a scale to accurately determine animal’s weight and thus the correct anesthetic dose, and lack of an adequate surface upon which to perform the surgery.
 

Computer Tips

There are a couple of different approaches you can take to getting a computer, and several choices for peripherals. Because there are so many choices that change so rapidly, we can’t give specifics here. The advice would be immediately outdated! However, we’ll give you a general approach and information about how to find the system to fit your needs.

The computer itself

Decide upon your basic approach: slow and careful (“small bite,”) or thorough and quick (“big bite.”)
The “Big Bite” approach: Do a lot of research, decide what business and/or veterinary software program you will want to stick with for a long time, and then buy a machine that is capable of running that program. This approach may cost more, but you also may save yourself work in the long run. Changing programs down the road could mean re-entering all your data.
The “Small Bite” approach: Another approach is the slow, easy, and inexpensive approach. Start with a “low end” machine and don’t worry about getting the latest, biggest or fastest one around. Also don’t worry about getting a “veterinary” computer or “veterinary” software.
You can start with a basic bookkeeping program like Quicken or QuickBooks for your books, and a simple word processing program for your records. These cost far, far less than products made for veterinarians. Thus you can get your computer and software for about $2000, learn on that, and then once you become “computer literate,” you can be an educated shopper and look into the veterinary software.
Another option is to lease your equipment at first, until you see what you like. This option is especially useful if you’re the type who is waiting to buy because you think the hardware is changing too fast or that the prices will come down next year. It allows you to “try before you buy.”
The problem here is that although it allows you to change hardware easily, you’re still stuck with the records you created in whatever software you decided to use. The ability of software programs to convert records to other formats is important. What’s more, leasing is usually more expensive than buying. Decide if you want to pay for the convenience.
Check out the results of our house call veterinarian survey at the end of this book for information about software programs used by others.

Hardware vs. software

Some companies offer to sell you a complete package, including both the computer hardware and the practice software. Be cautious, since you are likely to spend hundreds of dollars more for this little “convenience.” The match of software and hardware is not all that difficult. When you figure out the software program(s) you want to use, you can ask the software vendor about the minimal hardware requirements to run that software.
Warning: Get more than the minimum. The minimal requirements are usually not enough for comfortable use of the software. Usually any software will run faster and more efficiently on computers that have more than what the software manufacturer lists as the minimum requirement of RAM.
See the Appendix for the responses to Dr. Smith’s survey of housecall veterinarians that included a question about the type of software used.

Vehicle and office computers

You have several choices in selecting a computer for your home and your vehicle. You can have a full-sized office computer and have a second, portable computer that you keep in your vehicle all the time; or have one portable computer that is your only computer; or use only a fullsized computer in your home office and none in the vehicle.
One good compromise is to use a laptop as your only computer, hooking it up to a full size keyboard and monitor in your home (use what’s called a ‘docking station’). Also investigate the new options in hand-held (tablet or smartphone) computer technology. These computers are becoming more sophisticated, with some able to connect to a portable keyboard. This may serve as your “laptop” that you use on the road, synchronizing it to your desk computer when back at the office.

Keyboard and monitor

Consider a sliding keyboard tray that mounts under the desk. The best height for a keyboard (26”) is slightly lower than the best height for a writing desk (30”). Also, the best place for your monitor is low down and angled up toward you. Some people cut a hole in the desk and place a tray underneath it such that the monitor sticks up through the hole and faces toward them at an angle.

Printers

Get one.There are a huge number of choices, and most work just fine. Unless you are printing photographs, an inexpensive model will do.
Consider getting a portable printer for use in your vehicle. Many portable printers are inkjet printers. A portable printer can serve as your only printer or as a second printer that is always kept in your vehicle. A drawback to portable printers is that they often don’t have a paper tray; you may have to feed paper in one at a time, or there may be a tray that only holds a few sheets. If you don’t have a portable printer, then you either have to write out client invoices, e-mail them, or mail them later; either option is not as handy as just printing out the invoice on the spot.

Backup system

Many of us have endured the transition from 5 inch to 3 inch floppies to CDs and now DVDs. To avoid having to repeatedly transfer all your data, get a small external hard drive and back up your records to that. Use the external hard drive for daily backup. You can find fireproof hard drives that will ease your mind about that danger, but it’s also a good idea to have a backup somewhere that is burglar-proof as well. If you back up to “the cloud,” you will want your data on one of your own machines as well. “The cloud” is someone else’s computer, and you want to have your own backup, too. You may consider using a thumb drive, but be careful – with the steadily increasing size of files and software, it may not be big enough.

Basic steps in researching computer software

1. Go to a large veterinary meeting and devote a day or two to the exhibit hall. Approach every computer software vendor and ask them to show you how to use the programs. Get details about technical support (do you have to pay for it? Is there a toll-free number? What is the average length of time you’ll spend on hold? Is there free on-site technical support, and if so, for how long?)
   Certain software companies are much better at selling their product than others. Thus that product is used more, but perhaps a lesser-selling product is better for your needs. When trying out software, you should be able to sit down and start on your own. If it takes a lot of explanation, you may be in for a long and frustrating learning curve.
2. Ask other veterinarians about what programs they use. Ask specific questions about what they like and dislike about the programs. Find out what aspects of the programs they actually use, and which ones they don’t use (to avoid getting a fancy program with lots of bells and whistles you won’t ever need!). The Smith Veterinary Consulting House call survey found that there is no trend among house call veterinarians with regard to software used. It is clear that these veterinarians all have different priorities and interests.
   Also ask other non-veterinarian, small business owners about what programs they use. For instance, ask your dentist, ophthalmologist, and electrician about their software and hardware. Find out the specific work that they do on their computers, and what they like and don’t like about their software.
   When researching software, remember to take all recommendations with a grain of salt. Someone may be very happy with their software, but have they tried any other kinds? If not, they may not know how much better, easier, or less expensive something else might be! Also, is their situation the same or different than yours?
3. Investigate non-veterinary computer information. Read PC World magazine. Talk to people who are “computer literate” about what they think.