#practice management

♡ 2020.07.22 ♡

Hey vetblr!

I don’t use Ezyvet as a practice management system (because we we all find out eventually, there’s nothing easy about Ezyvet) but a friend does and they are really quite frustrated and miffed that there is no Mx option for client titles, just Mr, Mrs, Miss and Ms.

By rights this should be super easy to change. Other practice management systems let you add new titles as an admin, or just type them in if there’s nothing that matches in the drop down menu. But not Ezyvet.

Ezyvet is open source, so they will add new features, but only if they get enough votes. Simple, the feature needs at least ten votes to be considered. But in almost a year, it’s only gotten one.

If you use Ezyvet at your clinic, then the clinic has one vote for each computer terminal it’s installed on.

Please consider using that vote to get this really tiny, easy change implemented. It should be minimal effort for the developers and will make many people that little bit more comfortable.

It’s under ‘Client Title “Mx” - gender neutral clients” feature requests.

I feel...somewhat prepared. My buddy took his last week and failed so I’m already prepping myself of the possibility of failing it. And that’s okay! During my studying someone said that you'll be a better professional just by studying for the exam because you learn more about what you should be doing as an intern architect, and I thought that was a great way of looking at it.

I think you will all agree with me when I say that Dentistry is an art that requires a person to have a lot of patience and self-control. I am very passionate about Dentistry and anything teeth related but there are still some things that just drive me crazy. So being a mom and a full-time Dental Hygienist of course I had tons of time to be "extra" and give a full Confession of my 5 biggest Dental Hygiene Pet Peeves. In no specific order because these all drive me insane.

 When Patients Scrunch Their Lips

Maybe I should be doing this list in "stress level" order because this one is so annoying. I'm scaling #22-#27 and then boom, it begins. The lip fighting. I usually say: "Relax your lips." This obviously never works and I spend most of the appointment hunched over, standing on my head to clean 6 front teeth. Somebody, anybody leave me some advise.

 When Patients Refuse To Lay Back

 Think about this? How are they sleeping? I am a very caring person but it makes no sense why some patients cannot lay flat for an hour. Of course there are some medical issues but in most cases an hour is fine. What really gets my gears going is when that same patient allows the Doctor to lean them all the way back! Am I crazy?

 Frequent Rinsers

 I love my patients but if you need to rinse more than 4 times during a cleaning then it makes my Pet Peeves List. Use the suction that is what it's there for! I have had patients that refuse to use the suction and asked to rinse, Drumroll please................ 15 times. I counted. How can I stop this madness in patients that refuse the suction?

 The Habitual Latecomer

Every practice has one or a few. They come late and in many cases want to leave early. How is this even mathematically possible? If you eat up 15 minutes of a one hour appointment and want to leave 15 minutes before the hour is up, then I have 30 minutes! I cannot take radiographs, do a proper Dental Hygiene prophylaxis and have the Dentist give an exam in 30 minutes.

 When Patients Insist They Floss But Poor OH Is Evident

This one, is just plain ridiculousness. Why lie to the health professional? I can clearly see undisturbed, generalized plaque and my probe does not tell tall tales. Just confess and let's agree that you need to improve.

Hold on!

I want you to know that I have a passion for Dentistry but can we all agree that everyone has things about their career that is frustrating? Please feel free to leave your tips and comments below. Extra points and an Instagram shout out for everyone that shares this blog post, just tag me @ddsconnections so I know you shared it!

  Written by: Avalene Roberts R.D.H

I am a Mom, Dental Hygienist, wife, snowboarder, Cavity Smash player and Lover of everything teeth. Please subscribe to my blog and feel free to contact me about Dental Collaborations. Check out my Podcast available on itunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud. Subscribe to my youtube channel and don't forget to follow on Facebook and Twitter!

psssssst........Did you play Cavity Smash yet?

DDS Connections Podcast itunes

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Cavity Smash Game For iphone

I’ve sent them at every practice I worked at.

At the first there was no template, I had to think of what to say afresh each time, which was really difficult to do. There is certainly an art to writing a good sympathy card. At the second we had a template, but we vets were expected to write them and only the treating vet was supposed to sign and send it. At my current job we have a series of templates to guide us, and all staff sign the card. I prefer this method personally.

You want to send the card fairly promptly, a couple of days after the event is ideal. Leaving it for weeks is too late, and that is likely to open up wounds.

Growing a financial advice firm is not just about winning more clients. It is about being able to serve them well without the business breaking under the weight of its own growth. 

Many firms hit the ceiling. They take on more clients, the team gets stretched, service quality dips, and suddenly the growth they worked hard for becomes a problem. The instinct is to hire. But hiring is expensive, slow, and does not always fix the real issue. 

The real issue, in most cases, is operational. Not people. 

Why Headcount Is Not Always the Answer 

Hiring a new adviser or paraplanner costs money upfront. Salary, NI contributions, onboarding, training, supervision time. The FCA also expects firms to maintain adequate resources, which means you cannot just throw bodies at a problem and hope the compliance side takes care of itself. 

More staff also adds management complexity. More handoffs. More room for miscommunication. More processes that need documenting and monitoring. 

The firms that scale well do not always have the largest teams. They have the leanest, most structured operations. 

The Real Bottleneck: Back-Office Work 

Ask any financial adviser where their time goes, and the answer is almost never client meetings. It is the work around the meetings. Preparing suitability reports. Chasing platforms for valuations. Processing transfers. Writing up file notes. Dealing with provider admin. 

This is where capacity actually gets consumed. 

Research from Nucleus Financial has previously shown that advisers spend a significant portion of their working week on non-advice tasks. That is time not spent with clients, not generating revenue, and not building relationships. 

If you want to serve more clients, you need to reclaim that time. 

What High-Volume Firms Do Differently 

The firms that manage large client banks without proportionally large teams tend to share a few common practices. 

They Segment Their Client Bank Properly 

Not all clients need the same level of attention. A client with a complex pension drawdown strategy, IHT exposure, and business assets needs something very different from a client with a straightforward ISA and a mortgage protection policy. 

Segmentation lets firms allocate adviser time where it genuinely adds value. Lower-complexity clients can be managed through structured review processes, automated touchpoints, and paraprofessional support. 

Without segmentation, every client gets treated the same. That is not scalable, and it is not really in the client's interest either. 

They Build Repeatable Processes 

Ad hoc working kills capacity. When every piece of work is handled differently depending on who picks it up that morning, quality becomes inconsistent and time gets wasted on decisions that should already be made. 

High-performing firms build templates, workflows, and standard operating procedures. Suitability report templates. Onboarding checklists. Annual review packs. These are not shortcuts. They are the infrastructure that lets good people work efficiently. 

Understanding high-volume advice firm workflows can help you see exactly how that infrastructure looks in practice across different parts of the business. 

They Separate Advice from Administration 

This is probably the single biggest lever available to most firms. When advisers do their own admin, you are paying advice-level salaries for admin-level work. That is an inefficient use of resources regardless of how talented the person is. 

Firms that grow well assign work to the right level. Advisers advise me. Paraplanners research and writing. Administrators process and chase. Each role operates at the level it is trained and paid for. 

This separation is not about hierarchy. It is about matching work to skill. 

They Use Technology Sensibly 

Practice management software Like Intelliflo, Curo, or similar tools can significantly reduce the friction in running a client bank. Automated reminders, integrated valuations, digital fact-finds, electronic signatures. These tools exist to reduce manual handling. 

But technology alone does not fix a broken process. A bad process run through software is still a bad process. Firms that get value from technology invest time in setting it up properly first. 

The key is using technology to eliminate repetitive manual steps, not to add another system the team must maintain. 

Outsourcing as a Scaling Tool 

More firms are turning to outsourced back-office support as a way to add capacity without permanent headcount. This includes paraplanning, report writing, platform administration, and new business processing. 

Done well; outsourcing gives firms flexible capacity. Busy periods do not require emergency hiring. Quieter periods do not leave staff underutilized. 

It also keeps the core team focused. Advisers and senior paraplanners can concentrate on complex work and client relationships while routine processing is handled externally. 

4Admin works with financial advice firms specifically on this kind of back-office support, helping them scale service capacity without expanding their permanent team. 

The Compliance Consideration 

Any conversation about scaling must acknowledge compliance. The FCA's Consumer Duty requirements mean firms cannot cut corners on client outcomes in the name of efficiency. Suitability still needs to be demonstrated. Advice still needs to be documented properly. 

But compliance and efficiency are not opposites. A well-documented, repeatable process is often more compliant than one where every adviser does things their own way. Standardization creates an audit trail. It makes supervision easier. It reduces the risk of things being missed. 

Firms that treat process design as a compliance tool, not just an operational one, tend to handle regulatory scrutiny better. 

A Practical Starting Point 

If you want to increase capacity without hiring, start with an honest look at where time is going in your business. 

Track how advisers spend their week for two to four weeks 

Identify which tasks are genuinely advice-related and which are administrative 

Look at where work stalls or queues up regularly 

Ask what gets done differently depending on who handles it 

That audit will usually make the problem obvious. Most firms find that 40 to 60 percent of adviser time goes on work that does not require an adviser. 

From there, the options are straightforward. Reassign work. Build better processes. Use technology properly. Bring outsourced support for the areas where in-house capacity is the constraint. 

Final Thought 

Scaling a financial advice firm is an operational challenge as much as a commercial one. The firms that grow sustainably are not necessarily the ones with most staff. They are the ones that have built systems and processes that let a well-sized team do more.