28 Feb 2025
There are accreditation schemes available that allow practices to demonstrate their commitment to practising the very highest standards of pain management. Extra expense and work for the team, or a golden business opportunity? Matt Gurney, a specialist in anaesthesia and analgesia, explains the business value…
Matt Gurney
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Image: iStock / LEOcrafts
Far more than just bragging rights and a logo to stick in the window or pop on the website, independent accreditation has been shown to bring multiple benefits to businesses across a whole range of industries and sectors.
An obvious and immediate benefit is the clear demonstration of independent review of standards and adherence to regulations. It provides credibility and an assurance of quality, which, in an increasingly competitive environment, is a valuable market differentiator.
Investing in commitment to exceeding basic standards appeals to more than just current and potential clients. Supporting specific interests shows a dedication to proactively developing employees – a strong incentive to work for a company.
Additional benefits, such as access to quality CPD that often comes with accreditation, also helps to maintain employee satisfaction. Achieving accreditation can also send a more subliminal message that a practice is well run – it has “headspace” to do more than just provide the usual day-to-day service. This is a massive draw for employees in a sector that we all know has significant management challenges at times.
Achieving accreditation in a certain area immediately provides news for a practice to proactively communicate to its clients. It also naturally draws attention to important client education messages, helping to raise awareness. Coupled with a strong call to action, this will increase enquiries and footfall to the practice, benefitting not only the bottom line, but patient welfare and clinical outcomes too.
The process of achieving accreditation often includes a review of procedures, allowing opportunities for efficiencies to be identified. This can lead to streamlining of processes, which can generate significant financial gains and help to free up team time.
Achieving, and, perhaps more pertinently, maintaining accreditation, requires
keeping up-to-date with changing guidance, too, ensuring that protocols and approaches always reflect current thinking.
People want to associate with those that are doing (and are seen to be doing) their best. Accredited practices are not only more noticeable among the competition, but also more attractive for potential collaborations and partnerships.
Whether it’s rewards for involvement in a pharma company marketing campaign or creating stronger links with a referral centre, demonstrating commitment to excellence in a specific area can yield multiple benefits.
With many accreditation options available to veterinary practices, it can seem daunting to choose which one(s) to invest in chasing. Viewing it as a business decision can help maintain objectivity in this scenario and, as with any business decision, maximum return on investment should therefore be the key objective. Asking “what’s in it for…” the holy tetralogy of practice, employees, clients and patients provides a structured way to work through the process. Immediate financial benefits are one thing, but any enhancement to reputation and “value added” services will increase loyalty and advocacy from existing clients. Those clients will also be willing to spend more on your services and be more likely to follow your advice.
In terms of attracting new clients, it has been shown that a purpose-driven approach can quadruple the likelihood of consumers to spend their money with a business. They are up to six times more likely to protect that business if challenged and four-and-a-half times more likely to recommend that business to someone else. The value of finding a key cause to champion is clear.
As is so often the case, our employees are often a fantastic source of inspiration. Looking for specific interests within the team can be a great way to lead the charge on choosing which accreditation avenue to follow. Doing so can dramatically improve engagement by the team with the accreditation process itself, but also ongoing efforts to maintain standards. It also increases the sense of ownership and level of personal investment from individual employees – all important parts of the recipe for success.
Another important factor to consider is the degree of impact achieving accreditation will have for the workings of the practice and its team. Choosing an area that affects cases seen every day involves multiple team members to enact and has highly visible outcomes that will be felt the most in a hugely positive way. Pain management is a perfect example of this. Being able to really “feel” the benefits of accreditation every day once again helps maintain motivation from the team and, therefore, ongoing successes as a result of accreditation.
The more clients can appreciate and understand the outcomes of accreditation, the more of a positive effect it will have on the business. Put simply, they have to care about whatever it is that the accreditation signals your practice excelling at for it to have an impact on them.
This is where “thinking like a pet caregiver” is key – while something may (often quite rightly) be of huge importance to us as veterinary professionals, will it resonate with clients? Emotive subjects that clients are concerned about – like whether their beloved pet is in pain – really press the emotional hot buttons and are, therefore, any evidence of “above and beyond” efforts that are felt more deeply. More than a third of Zero Pain Philosophy members said that the appeal of being a Zero Pain Philosophy-accredited practice to their clients was the most valuable thing about their membership.
Patient welfare and clinical outcomes should always be at the heart of anything done in a veterinary practice, whether direct or indirect. The easier it is for everyone to understand and appreciate the benefits of any intervention or change, the more of an impact it will have and, therefore, the chances of its success will increase.
This is where choosing to focus on something like pain management once again reaps rewards, combining obvious welfare benefits and proven improvement to clinical outcomes.
Any practice that takes pain management seriously can consider applying to become accredited with Zero Pain Philosophy. Success doesn’t rely on being absolute analgesic experts – the scheme is designed to reward those practices that care about improving pain management and are proactively taking steps to do this. Embracing opportunities to develop and grow the pain management offering is a core value of accreditation.
Becoming an accredited practice allows you to easily demonstrate your practice’s pain management credentials. In doing so, you can harness the maximum business benefits of accreditation in an area that ticks all of the boxes – for employees, clients and patients.
