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Melanie Cole (Host): Welcome to UF Vet Med Voice with the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine. I'm Melanie Cole. And I hope that you'll join us as we discuss training tomorrow's veterinarians for practice ownership. Joining me is Dr. Martha Mallicote. She's a Clinical Associate Professor of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Mallicote, it's a pleasure to have you join us today. As we get into this topic, can you give us a little history of the veterinary profession as it relates to training graduates to become small business owners? How has this typically been handled? Is it a school lesson? Is it on the job training? Give us a little history here.

Martha Mallicote, DVM, MBA (Guest): That's a great place to start Melanie, because quite honestly, historically in vet med, we've done a really terrible job of educating our students to run businesses. And yet when they graduate, the historical model has been that the vast majority of them enter practice, often in a small one, two doctor practice and often end up as practice owners.

So it's really a shortcoming of our training programs that we weren't equipping them better to be really savvy business owners in that setting. And so then they were forced to have to either seek that training elsewhere after graduation, or, you know, go a bit blindly into the process of buying and owning a veterinary practice. And neither of those options are ideal.

Host: No, certainly not. What an interesting topic we're discussing today. So, while there are other veterinary colleges that offer training in veterinary business related skills, the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine is the only college that offers an academically credentialed business management certificate program for veterinary students. Can you tell us a little bit about that, about the certificate program and just really tell us about what's going on there.

Dr. Mallicote: Absolutely. I mean, it's been a really exciting program and I've been involved since the outset. Our current Dean, Dr. Dana Zimmel, this was actually her brain child, and she saw an opportunity to do a better job of educating our students in this area beyond what, at that point, was just a few business classes that were required. Very basic content. You know, there's so much other stuff in the curriculum that we can't expect every veterinary student to take several more courses to try bulk up this area of the content. But what we were able to start was a certificate program, that was an elective, but academic program. So, several courses are involved and it really focused on building out those business skills.

The things that they need from day one, as practitioners, as well as ultimately practice owners, things like having a good understanding of communication, of human resources, of finances. And so built out this program with several courses that culminates in a capstone where we actually perform a practice evaluation, of a relatively local veterinary practice.

I work with groups of students, about six in a group and we over the course of a week, we'll actually evaluate that practice's function, their qualitative experience for their clients, their financial status. And they're able to put all those pieces together in something that's really applicable to taking it out into the world and looking at it from a business owner's perspective later.

In medicine, we have this model of clinical instruction, of using cases, of using actual occurrence of disease to teach our students. And that's common across all the medical professions and including veterinary medicine. And so what we've actually done is taken that model of let's practice on a patient, except now the patient is a veterinary hospital. And so they're able to apply the skills they've learned and sort of put all the pieces together in a way that really gets them prepared to go out into the world and ultimately own a veterinary practice.

Host: What a great experience for those students. So, as they're learning to successfully navigate that business end, when they've been studying veterinary medicine, can you just tell us a little bit about how you do this as far as helping the students managing loan debt. And really, as you're telling us about the benefits of practice ownership and knowing how to do cost benefit analysis, all of these things, tell us a little bit about how you get them to learn these things.

Dr. Mallicote: Absolutely. I mean, I would put the big types of content that we're covering in two big buckets and you've discussed kind of both of them there. One of them is things that are useful as a business owner, things like how can I do a cost benefit analysis to determine whether I should buy this ultrasound machine?

And then the other bucket is things that are going to help everyone, no matter whether they're a practice owner or not. And that is understanding how they're going to manage their own student loan debt, how they're going to manage their own career trajectory. And we do cover kind of both of those buckets; but from a perspective of the business management side, I really focus on using small exercises to give them the tools to ultimately put together in the future as a practice owner. And so that might be having an exercise where they need to develop a mission and a vision for some future practice that they would like to be the owner of and really applying their own values to development of those two conceptual baselines, really important for strategic planning for any business.

You may actually, present this concept of oh the ultrasound example I already gave or shall we buy this radiograph machine and is it financially responsible? Can we pay back the cost of it and yield further revenue from purchasing that equipment? So, smaller exercises focused around small topics.

We do financial analysis of kind of fake practices, practices where I've manipulated the numbers to demonstrate certain things that we see in reality in the world. And have them do small pieces of analysis on that to come to conclusions about the financial health of that business. And then in the bucket regarding their own personal professional development, things like that career trajectory, their loan debt; we talk about the tools that are available to them. We talk about examples of other colleagues and how they have used these tools to their advantage. And then I try to empower the students to literally apply it to their plans, goals and future, and as they apply those concepts to their future planning for their career, for the process of applying and negotiating for a job, they can put them into practice and really cement those skills for future use the next time around.

Host: What a great program. And I think that what you've just described for any student graduating, whether they're veterinary medicine or anything else, those kinds of bits of information, and those lessons that you're teaching can take really anybody pretty far learning how to manage their own personal debts and those sorts of things. What a great program. How have the reviews been Dr. Mallicote? What are the students saying?

Dr. Mallicote: So as I said, we started this in 2013. So, our first set of graduates at this point are getting to the point where one can realistically expect that they would be buying practices. And the good news is, they are. I hear back from them, telling me about their experiences of buying a practice or reaching out before the process to check in and get some more advice and referrals and guidance about how to go about that process.

But what we are hearing from these grads is that they most certainly are buying veterinary practices. They're starting veterinary practices and they've been successful with it. So, that's the longer trajectory is are these graduates actually ending up as practice owners and that's not something that we can answer the day after they graduate, right?

That wouldn't be a realistic expectation, but we are seeing that a few years past that graduation date, they are in fact doing that. The other positive feedback that we're getting about the program is that every year, we have graduates that go out into the world and they're all negotiating on their own behalf for those first jobs salaries. And they are negotiating for the first job benefits and type of job that they're going to have and whether it fits what their expectations and goals are. And so, we collect data about those first job characteristics, both the type of job, and also the numbers of it, the salary, the benefits, all of those sorts of things.

And we see that University of Florida graduates tend to be above national numbers in that area as well. And I certainly don't want to say it's all about numbers, but given the amount of student loan debt that many of our veterinary students do graduate with, it is an important piece of the pie.

Host: Well it's certainly is what great information you've given us here today. So additionally, and before we wrap up, as that training you're providing gives students that confidence to feel that they can compete in the marketplace and start their own practice. Tell us how crucial it is for young veterinarians to know what it takes to run a practice, whether it's for success in practice, mastery of finances and staff management, of course, client relationships. Tell us how this translates to better care for animal patients and can also contribute to that personal wellness through improved efficiencies.

Dr. Mallicote: It's been very interesting as this program has grown over the last several years, to watch this really rapid increase in corporate owned veterinary practices. It's been something that's certainly been out there for a number of years now, but there seems to be pretty rapid growth. And there's a perception in the marketplace that veterinary graduates, recent graduates, aren't interested in buying practices and that's what I hear a lot. And I can see that that's patently false amongst our graduating classes, but even more so, equipping these graduates of our college to be comfortable to go out there and buy and run a practice, means that we can maintain some of this variety in the marketplace.

There is a veterinary practice and culture to fit every pet owner and pet owning family and having all of those practices end up owned by corporate entities and having pretty uniform cookie cutter experiences for the clients, isn't going to end up providing that variety of experiences and variety of types of care.

And so maintaining the small one or two practice owned entities that are owned by veterinarians, to me is incredibly important to keeping that variety of culture of care out there. Additionally, and again, it's not all about the dollars, but at the end of the day, that's part of the consideration is that practice ownership does yield more financial benefit than simply being an associate veterinarian.

And that's pretty, well-documented actually even in the veterinary literature. And so these students that are struggling with how am I going to manage this substantial student loan burden, have a tool to manage by becoming practice owners. And so, it's better pet care. It's a culture that's often focused on the specific type of practice environment and further, the veterinarians also can easily pay back their loans and have a route towards being a little bit more financially comfortable and well.

Host: Certainly true. And as the need for veterinarians grows, those small family owned type veterinary clinics are really going to be crucial to communities. And thank you so much, Dr. Mallicote for joining us today. To listen to more podcasts from the experts at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, please visit vetmed.ufl.edu.

And that concludes today's episode of UF Vet Med Voice brought to you by the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, advancing animal, human and environmental health. I'm Melanie Cole.