Financial strategy to recover from COVID-19

Philippe Baralon

Dr. Baralon graduated from the École Nationale Vétérinaire of Toulouse, France in 1984 and went on to study Economics (Master of Economics, Toulouse, 1985) and Business Administration (MBA, HEC-Paris 1990). He founded his own consulting group, Phylum, in 1990 and remains one of its partners to this day, acting primarily as a management consultant for veterinary practices in 26 countries worldwide. His main areas of specialization are strategy, marketing and finance, and he is also involved in training veterinarians and support staff in the field of practice management through lectures and workshop, as well as benchmarking the economics of veterinary medicine in different parts of the world. A prolific author, he has authored more than 50 articles on veterinary practice.

Pere Mercader

Dr. Mercader established himself as a practice management consultant to veterinary clinics in 2001 and since then has developed this role in Spain, Portugal and some Latin-American countries. His main accomplishments include authoring profitability and pricing research studies involving Spanish veterinary clinics, lecturing on practice management in more than 30 countries, and authoring the textbook “Management Solutions for Veterinary Practices” which is published in Spanish, English and Chinese and has sold worldwide. In 2008, he co-founded VMS (Veterinary Management Studies), a business intelligence firm that provides a benchmarking service for more than 800 Spanish veterinary practices. Dr. Mercader was also a co-founder of the Spanish Veterinary Practice Management Association (AGESVET) and served on its board for eight years.
 

Introduction

When facing a crisis such as COVID-19 we need to deal with uncertainty. At the time of writing neither the magnitude nor the duration of the pandemic is known – but it is already obvious that the virus has had a very rapid and violent impact on the economics of veterinary business. Hopefully, it will be relatively short-lived. However it is apparent that during this period veterinary practice owners will experience a dramatic drop in revenue, so it is essential to reduce costs in order to minimize losses and avoid a financial crisis. Unfortunately, given the timeframe of the present pandemic it is impossible to fully adapt expenditure in proportion to income because of the importance of fixed costs. This paper offers a blueprint to help maintain a practice through these difficult next few weeks or months, and Table 1 offers a summary in the form of a priority action grid (Figure 1).  [...]