Veterinary Blueprints
The Veterinary Blueprint Podcast is all about taking the blueprint of industry experts and breaking it down in short, digestible episodes you can use to take your practice to the next level. Join host Bill Butler as he interviews experts on client and practice management, financial strategies, human resources, and more. Gain valuable insights and stay ahead in the veterinary field by tuning in to tips from successful experts inside and outside the veterinary industry.
Veterinary Blueprints
#14 - Telemedicine's Role in Modernizing Pet Treatment Practices
Embark on an inspiring journey with Dr. Samantha Vitale, veterinary neurologist and CEO of Stratocyte, as we explore the innovative world of veterinary teleconsulting. Samantha shares her voyage from hands-on clinic work to revolutionizing vet care delivery, offering an intimate glimpse into her passion for extending specialty care to pets far and wide. With Stratocyte leading the charge, we discuss the transformative effects this digital leap has on pets and practitioners in remote areas, ensuring that no companion animal goes without the expert care they deserve.
The conversation shifts to the nuts and bolts of integrating teleconsulting into day-to-day veterinary operations. Managing challenging conditions such as epilepsy or diabetes in pets can overwhelm general practitioners, but with the advent of teleconsulting, they now have a lifeline. We provide actionable insights for clinics seeking to blend this modern approach into their routines, all the while highlighting the strengthened connections with pet owners and the enhanced quality of life for their furry companions.
Finally, we turn to the bustling marketplace that Stratocyte has created, a virtual hub where general practitioners can easily tap into a wealth of specialist knowledge. This innovative platform is likened to an Etsy for veterinary specialists, where thriving communities of vets work collaboratively to bolster patient outcomes and clinic revenues. Samantha's personal experiences bring home the profound impact teleconsulting has on both the human and animal members of the family, truly capturing the heart of why we do what we do. Join us to see how the future of veterinary care is being shaped right before our eyes.
Guest Info
Samantha Vitale
samantha@stratocyte.com
linkedin.com/in/samantha-vitale-stratocyte
US only - (224) 526-7286
Outside US - (844) 947-4401 (Toll free)
https://stratocyte.com/
Host Information
Bill Buter – Contact Information
Direct – 952-208-7220
https://butlervetinsurance.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/billbutler-cic/
Schedule a Strategy Session with Bill – Strategy Session
Podcast Sponsored By:
Butler Vet Insurance: We wrote the Book on Veterinary Insurance
Running a successful veterinary practice comes with its challenges. At Butler Vet Insurance, we specialize in simplifying insurance for professionals like you.
"Protecting Your Veterinary Practice": Your Guide to Stress-Free Insurance
Insurance-related stress: Order Your Copy Now
Why Choose Butler Vet Insurance?
We specialize in risk management tailored for veterinarians, addressing unique challenges!
Butler Vet Insurance – Your Trusted Insurance Partner for Veterinary Practices.
Welcome to the Veterinary Blueprint Podcast brought to you by Butler Vet Insurance. Hosted by Bill Butler, the Veterinary Blueprint Podcast is for veterinarians and practice managers who are looking to learn about working on their practice instead of in their practice. Each episode we will bring you successful, proven blueprints from others, both inside and outside the veterinary industry. Welcome to today's episode.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Veterinary Blueprints Podcast, where business ideas and entrepreneurship meet the veterinary industry. I am your host, bill Butler, and today. Now I don't know when this will air, but this is our first recording of 2024, so I'm excited to have Dr Samantha Vitale with us.
Speaker 2:Professionally, samantha shines as a board-certified veterinary neurologist, but she has focused her dedication in the last couple years to solving some industry challenges in the veterinary community and that's evident based on her belief that veterinary professionals deserve the tools and resources for world-class patient care and help them fulfill their careers as healthcare professionals in the animal health space. Her own experiences as a veterinarian in remote areas ignited her desire to ensure that all pets, regardless of location, can receive top-tier veterinary care. After a successful career in private practice, samantha has embraced innovation after seeing the need in the animal health space that's very prevalent in human health, and now she is the CEO of Stratasite, which is a startup giving access to veterinary specialists not just in the United States but worldwide via teleconsulting. So her mission is to help bring specialty care everywhere to every pet and pet owner and veterinarian, and today we'll talk about some of her journey along with her what she sees as some of the future for veterinary medicine. So let's dive in. Welcome Samantha.
Speaker 3:Hi Bill, Thanks so much for having me in for that introduction dive in.
Speaker 2:Welcome, samantha. Hi Bill, thanks so much for having me in for that introduction. Well, you and I connected on LinkedIn, as I'm connecting with many professionals in the industry like yourself, and we wound up having a conversation about some stuff and it seemed like there's a need for what you're doing in the industry. So why don't you, just before we dive into what Stratasite is and what teleconsulting is for veterinarians who aren't experiencing that, why don't you just kind of give us a very brief overview of you and what you've done to get where you are right now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. I'm originally from Memphis, tennessee. I wanted to be a veterinarian since I found out what a veterinarian was, so just focused all of my childhood on trying to get into vet school. I went to Mississippi State University for undergrad in vet school, had a great experience there and then ended up deciding I wanted to specialize in neurology during my clinical years of vet school. So I was fortunate enough to get accepted into a couple of internships and then a residency program which landed me in central Illinois, in the Midwest, where I'm not at all familiar with the concept of winter, but I'm now very familiar with Did my residency at the University of Illinois and ended up loving the Midwest, getting married and moving here permanently. So here we are.
Speaker 2:So here you are, and so I think people look at the Midwest and think, oh, they hear Illinois and they think Chicago, correct, but if you drive south from Chicago for about two hours, you wind up in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3:Yes, there's a whole other state. It's very, very different from Chicago.
Speaker 2:There's Chicago and then the rest of Illinois.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly, and so you know, going to to doing my residency at the U of I in Champaign, we were about three hours South of Chicago, about an hour and a half from Indy and about three hours from St Louis, and we were the only veterinary specialty center in the center of the state, really South of Chicago. So we had people from all over Illinois Southern Illinois, Bloomington, Peoria, Springfield, kind of the whole central and south part of the state driving hours to see any of our various specialists. So that kind of started helping me recognize that there is a little bit of a geographical issue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, planted a seed right.
Speaker 3:Exactly Like. People want to seek certain levels of specialty care, but when they're having to drive three hours one way just to see a specialist for an appointment, that is an inconvenience, it's a hardship, not everyone can do that and it adds to the overall cost of the veterinary.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:And then I, because I lived in the Midwest and I moved to Springfield. There's no veterinary specialty hospitals in Springfield, so I ended up working as a locum neurologist actually. So every other week I flew to South Florida and worked at a large specialty hospital in South Florida, which was fun, Um. And then when I wasn't working, I was kind of working behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:Especially in like January February.
Speaker 3:That was great yes.
Speaker 2:Left my poor husband with the dog and the chicken. So good luck, go to the beach. We have a couple of emergency care facilities that have board-certified cardiologists and board-certified you know small animal and board-certified. You know neurology as your specialty, but if you drive an hour in any direction from you know Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport, you are going to be in a cornfield and so you know for for for that pet owner or that veterinarian specifically, when you, when you talk about trying to provide care, you know, I think that the, the level of care that's available now for for pet owners, specifically, you know, companion animal, is just so much different than it was 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:And I, you know I I wasn't involved in this 20 years ago, but I just even in the five or so years that we've really been active in the veterinary community with my industry, it's changing quite a bit and so, um, so you've you saw that change, you saw a need, like there's just areas of the country where where pet owners don't have access to specialty care and and so talk about some of the evolution, or you know, okay, you identified this issue. What did, what did you think was kind of a next logical step for veterinary care from from your viewpoint, cause you're still in middle central Illinois, right.
Speaker 3:Yes, yep, I'm still in central Illinois and I still don't have a day job at a specialty hospital, which is fine because I really like my day job running this company. Yeah, so there's always going to be a place for in-person veterinary referral. There's always going to be a place for in-person veterinary referral. There's always going to be a surgery that you need to do a residency to train to do. There's always going to be diagnostic equipment that it doesn't make sense for a GP to have in their practice.
Speaker 3:There's always going to be the need for a veterinary specialist to put their hands on an animal to do a procedure, to have that in-person consultation experience. But just because there's a need for that doesn't mean that there is always the opportunity or ability for that pet to get to that specialist. For whatever reason, either geography, the pet owner physically can't or won't drive to see someone. Wait times, even in like New York City where you know where there's tons of specialty hospitals we're seeing wait times of months just to get in to see a specialist.
Speaker 3:Maybe they can't get in, but they don't want to wait two months to see someone about their dog's cancer, or maybe they're just, you know, for whatever reason that pet is not, maybe they're not stable enough to travel to another hospital.
Speaker 3:So there's always going to be reasons why pets that would benefit from seeing a specialist in person are not going to get to see a specialist in person, at least not right away, and we wanted to create a plan B for that pet. That was better than like sorry, like it's all or nothing you know. So having the opportunity to consult remotely with a specialist and have their expertise weigh in and be able to make the most of what resources that veterinarian who's caring for that pet has in their clinic is a great option for those pets that can't travel. And then there's also specialty cases that don't necessarily need to go see the specialist but could still benefit from their management, their input, their expertise on a remote basis. And when we're dealing with a specialist shortage, not only because of geography but just because there's like there's only 450 board certified veterinary neurologists in North America there's not there's obviously not enough to go around to every city.
Speaker 3:So there's just, we're spread thin and the ones that are in practice full time need to be doing the procedures, need to be seeing the cases that need that advanced, those advanced skills and those advanced that advanced equipment, and maybe the ones that just need a consultation or the owner just wants their opinion before they think about making the drive. There's a lot of indications where remote consultation can take the place of an initial or an in-person visit.
Speaker 2:So you know, as as far as in in my family we actually just kind of went through this right. So if you're a pet owner, you know putting on the pet owner's hat right A lot of times when you need to see that specialist. It's really that kind of once in that pet's life's decision of are we going to proceed down path A, which is a course of treatment you know thinking about, you know you had mentioned cancer, right, and so I think for that pet owner it's one of those things where the general practitioner can give some of that quality of life, like, okay, if you decide not to treat, you know, the cancer, this is what's going to happen over the next probably two to six months. I mean realistically. You know I had a cat that was 18 years old, had a lymphoma and it was okay. We're going to do some sub-Q fluids. You can do these at home. If the cat gets bad you can come in and we might be able to do some stuff, but it's probably not worth doing anything. So it's managing the quality of life for the animal until it's too far gone.
Speaker 2:But if you're going to make that decision as a pet owner, it's okay. Are we going to go down path A, which is a treatment protocol which is potentially thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, thousands of dollars, and if I'm going to do that, the general practitioner might want it's, it's the one-time consult with the oncologist to say this is what you're going to do and this is how long it's going to go on this, this is what it is, versus just the general practitioner going well, if you want to do that, it's this, but but, um, helping that pet owner make that, make that kind of A or B decision, Like if we're going to go down this path, it's this, if we're not going to go down that path, it's that. Is that I mean? Does that accurately describe some of those decisions that you need to make up front of that course of treatment?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's one really good indication is sometimes when you're initially faced with a complex diagnosis and you're wanting to help the pet owner make those decisions Should I pursue surgery? Should I try chemo? Should I try X, y and Z? There's a new treatment but I haven't had a chance to use it yet. I don't have any personal basis of how this is going to affect your pet. Having that specialist with expertise in that area come in and say these are your three options, these are the studies and my own personal experience that support your expected outcomes for each of these three options, because we, as veterinarians, I mean it's impossible to keep up with every single study.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:This is when that comes out. So having someone that's saying like, oh yeah, no, I wrote that paper, this is actually what we can expect in this situation can be very helpful. I think. The other indication for that is when you have chronic cases that are complex and need lifelong management.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:When you have chronic cases that need lifelong management and are maybe not routine. So when you have a patient with epilepsy, a seizure disorder, and the seizures are very difficult to control, they're not responding to medications that you're comfortable prescribing. When you've got a diabetic that's not very responsive to therapy, when you've got a case that is very difficult to diagnose, sometimes being able to bring the specialist in, have that kind of collaborative care in your practice, can be a lot more accessible and affordable for the owner than if they have to drive three hours every time they need to recheck their diabetic patient's blood glucose or something like that Sure, I mean, I even think about my mom with her, with her dog, they had a Gordon Setter and you know, for her to need to go to the specialty clinic, you know, just for an oral exam, was was an hour and they may have been able to do, and that's even in the Twin Cities, right.
Speaker 2:That's you know. Even if you think about Chicago, if you're trying to go see a specialist from the north side of Chicago to the south side of Chicago, like you know, that could be a four-hour drive depending on the day and road construction, and so you know having accessibility to not necessarily that in-person, as you mentioned, there will always be a place in the medical profession, whether it's animal or human health, of that in-person, hands-on. Hey, let's see the, the animal, walk across the floor or what's their. You know what's their disposition in person versus here's how they're presenting what do you think?
Speaker 3:specialist yeah, and the nice thing about, you know, at least with our platform, is we do have video capabilities so the specialist can do some extent of the exam with the general practitioner so they can watch the animal you know, observe them in the exam room, observe them in the environment. They can also, you know, send and receive videos of the exam that the specialist is doing. So we do have a lot of ways to kind of have that specialist be part of the exam process. So we try to mitigate that distance as much as we can.
Speaker 2:So that kind of leads me to a question that I have about for a busy general practitioner and I'd say every general practitioner out there is probably busy, whether you're you know a solo practitioner, you've got five associates working for you. You're probably busy. How can they incorporate teleconsulting into their practice If they're not utilizing this now and they're just referring to the you know? Hey, here's this emergency practice that has you know Dr Samantha's four hours away in Springfield. You're in you know Champaign or something. How would I incorporate that into my practice?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's something that would be great to have a plan in place and discuss with your team ahead of time, because it is very hard when you're in the middle of a busy day and you're like man, I do not know what to do next for this patient's diabetes. Oh yeah, maybe I should log into my StrataCite account and try to. Even if it's a relatively intuitive, easy to use thing, it's very hard to adopt a new skill and habit in the middle of your busy workflow. So I encourage people to try to build, using teleconsulting, into your existing SOPs, into your existing plans for how you work up and manage cases.
Speaker 3:And we're doing things like this already, right?
Speaker 3:If you have digital radiology in your clinic, you're taking x-rays digitally, you're more than likely, at least some of the time, sending those images to a radiologist to get a report back. Or if you're doing a biopsy, you're more than likely sending that sample off to the lab for pathology. So we're already in the habit of offering this, as you know, having a specialist or another expert's opinion as a service to complement what we're providing. So I would encourage people you know, let's say, that you're in a GP practice you're going to spay a patient, right? You already have a standard operating procedure in place. You already have an estimate in place, standard things you're going to do. Okay, we're going to do a physical exam, we're probably going to do some in-house pre-anesthetic blood work, we're going to come up with an anesthesia protocol and we're going to come up with a post-operative pain management plan and at-home monitoring plan for the patient when they go home, right? So if you add into that okay, this patient is a high risk anesthesia candidate they're unstable or which was my my parents.
Speaker 2:Gordon Sutter was a high risk anesthesia patient who would take seven hours to wake up from anesthesia. My mom's like can I get my dog? And they're like it's not awake yet.
Speaker 3:Right, or the client is nervous about anesthesia because they've had a bad experience in the past. Okay, well, guess what? As part of our surgery package, we also offer a customized anesthesia consultation with a board-certified anesthesiologist who's going to review your patient's records, their previous response to therapy, the medications that we have available for this. They're going to come up with a plan of what to use, how to monitor, what to look for, and they're going to submit that to us and we're going to use their advice and we'll be able to contact them if we need to if there's any complications.
Speaker 3:So, having that kind of built into your SOP for those high risk candidates or concerned owners, or if you're going, you have a patient that you believe has cancer and you take a sample of the suspected tumor and you send it out for cytology or for biopsy or what have you, you get those results back. Now the next step in that diagnostic process is submitting that case to an oncologist to get the list of options that we have, present that accurately to the owner and have them decide which route they want to take. So just having that part of your workflow as it is starting, think of it not as like oh, this is my backup plan, for I don't know what to do with this case and now I have to try to figure it out when I'm busy but having it kind of built into your routine of when I have this type of case come in. I can offer these services as diagnostics and treatments, and this is one of the services that we have to offer our clients to enhance the level of care that we can provide.
Speaker 2:So you know that teleconsulting to build your practice and increase revenues because, at the end of the day, you know it's, it's the, it's, it's the care and services, it's the hey, would you like fries? With that mentality of offering the extra component, of saying, well, you know, yep, your dog has had bad reaction to anesthesia in the past. Would you like us, on the next surgery we do, would you like a consultation with a board certified anesthesiologist? My mom would have said yes, 10 times out of 10 and said, yeah, I'll pay for the extra consultation to make sure that we're on the right page. And so you know your platform, stratasite. So you know your platform Stratasite. How you know number one, how many platforms are there out there? You know, not talking about competitors, but you know if you're, if you're a veterinary practice that wants to incorporate that obviously Stratasite is a place to do that. What's out there in the market right now? And why did you see a need to build something?
Speaker 3:Yeah, great question. So when we first started the company, we didn't start out as let's build a platform. We're not tech people, we're veterinarians. Myself and a couple of colleagues started out as like, let's consult, let's put ourselves out there, let's offer consultations to other veterinarians.
Speaker 2:So we so you started this, as you're offering the consultations. How do we do consultations? Because we're in the middle of nowhere. I don't want to live in Florida. I love the Midwest, but I want to be able to offer my board-certified neurology services, even though I'm in small, rural Illinois Right, illinois.
Speaker 3:Right, and so when we started that process, we quickly figured out at the time there was nothing really available for specialists as a resource trying to start this business on their own, so we were basically doing our own marketing, like calling vet clinics hey, do you want to consult? Going and using email and Google Drive and stuff to send cases, and where do you store these files? Is this secure? Do I just keep this on my laptop? All of the like, the mark, and then the accounting and the invoicing and all of the kind of administrative things that go into running a consulting business started to realize it would be great for especially for these busy practitioners that are still in specialty practice, you know, full or part time and are just trying to do this on the side, instead of them having to quit their job and work for a big corporation as a consultant, or instead of them having to like hire someone to build a business for them. Why don't we just build a business that they can walk into? And so that's why we built this as a marketplace. As far as I know, we're the only veterinary teleconsulting marketplace. There are a handful of other consulting companies either independent veterinarians that are doing their own thing.
Speaker 3:On the side IDEX and Antec, some of the bigger companies will hire specialists to act as consultants for their customers. There are some radiology groups that are now offering kind of specialist consultations as an additional service, so there are other people trying to do it. What we built and what we wanted to design was something that would be accessible to every single specialist that wanted to consult.
Speaker 2:So on both sides, right. So you built a platform on one side for the general practitioner to be able to access specialists, but then you also built a platform where the specialists can say, hey, I'm available. So I've used Fiverr and I don't know if anyone's ever heard of Fiverr, but Fiverr is basically a service. You go out there and say, hey, I need a graphic designer. You put the bid out and whoever somewhere in the world will do a voiceover, they'll do a marketing program for you, they'll design a logo, and so it's. It's really where you're matching up somebody's talents with somebody who says, hey, I need somebody to stand, I need somebody to do a voiceover for me, and you go out to this service and you hire somebody to do a voiceover.
Speaker 3:You know it's. It's a marketplace, so it's kind of most similar to Etsy. We compare it to.
Speaker 2:That was actually I was going to ask that. I was going to say I was like, oh, is this you really built the Etsy of veterinary consulting? Yeah, we call ourselves the Etsy of veterinary, okay, good, that was actually the question I was going to ask Samantha. It's like, uh, forgive me for saying this, but like this feels like it's Etsy, where if somebody is has a very successful, lucrative practice as a board certified cardiologist in Minnesota but they'd like to do some side hustle consulting, it's really the ability to do some side hustle consulting as a board certified cardiologist.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly, and we have a lot of people at academia who work in universities that like this, because they do get some off clinic time where they do teaching and research and things like that, and they're allowed to do some consulting work in that off clinic time.
Speaker 3:So this is, I mean it can be, if you build up a successful enough consulting business and you want to consult full-time, great. But this is designed so that, instead of having to take someone out of private practice, hire them to be available when we need them, we can have anybody be available to the extent that they want. So all of our specialists are independent. They create a free account, they work for themselves, they set their own prices and services and schedule and then we just have this basically platform available where, when a vet needs a specialist, they search for the specialist they need. They can say I need a cardiologist that's available today, and then they can see who's available today, what services they offer, find someone that meets their patient's needs and book the appointment. So we basically just took all of the administrative works out of both ends of that and just made it an easy place where they can come and connect.
Speaker 2:So I'm not a regulatory wonk. I don't understand all the. You know every state is different. It's all regulated by the Board of Animal Health or whatever they call themselves in each state because they're all different. So you know how does that work with? You know, not in. You know we mentioned the worldwide component. Obviously you know you're looking to build a worldwide empire here of teleconsulting. How does that work from a regulatory standpoint, state to state? You know insurance, professional liability, all of those things.
Speaker 3:This is a question that we get a lot, and I think it's really important to kind of understand the different types of telehealth and the different regulations that are assigned to each one of them, because I have seen a lot of instances where people will use all these terms interchangeably and sometimes incorrectly, and that's where it gets a little bit confusing.
Speaker 2:Before we started this, I even said telemedicine. You're like it's not telemedicine, it's teleconsulting. So you know, let's be clear about what we're actually doing. So, stratasite, and what you're offering and what you're talking about inside the veterinary animal health community, is teleconsulting.
Speaker 3:Teleconsulting? Yeah, and the American Veterinary Medical Association defines teleconsulting as the process by which a veterinary specialist or other qualified expert provides advice to another veterinarian. So we are 100% vet to vet. Our consultants cannot, should not and will not directly communicate with a pet or a pet owner. They will not prescribe medications, they will not make a diagnosis, they will not be the doctor on this case. They are simply providing their expertise to a colleague who acts as the veterinarian on the case, as the prescribing veterinarian, and the key thing here is veterinarian-client-patient relationship.
Speaker 3:So that's like the legal term that defines how a veterinarian can interact with a client and a patient. So any veterinarian that makes a diagnosis, makes patient-specific recommendations directly to the client or prescribes medications has to have this veterinary and client-patient relationship VCPR we'll call it for short and that means they have to know the patient's history, they have to have a legal, signed relationship with the legal owner of the pet, they have to have examined the patient in some capacity, they have to provide follow-up and maintain medical records for that patient. So our consultants do not have to have a VCPR. They do not have a relationship with the client. They're simply providing recommendations to the veterinarian that holds the VCPR, and so that's different from telemedicine.
Speaker 2:So, in layman's terms, you've created a phone, a friend platform for advice for veterinarians. Hey, I need help with the answer to this question. I don't know what to do. Or I think this is appropriate. Or you know the anesthesia case. Yeah, we've just got a problematic case here. We need to have a board certified anesthesiologist.
Speaker 2:I, you know, and I think that for what's one of those things right, where I think most veterinarians could go find the answer somewhere, the answer's out there for them to go find. But it's the time, it's the work involved, it's hey, I had a colleague one time. Are they still doing this? Or you know, for a lot of the specialists out there, board-certified specialists they put out papers, there's papers on this stuff. But from a medical professional's perspective, from that general practitioner, to go try and find the protocol for anesthesia, to do that at my practice, I just don't have time for that and I might be looking at outdated information. And there's new stuff out there that board-certified specialists in anesthesiology or neurology or cardiology, orthopedics have that information because they they're they're in it every day.
Speaker 3:Right, and what's more than that is it? It turns like okay, I'm going to go stop what I'm doing and scroll through all these journal articles and try to find something and interpret it and understand it, or I'm going to text someone I went to vet school with and hope they're out of the country.
Speaker 2:Available today.
Speaker 3:yeah, it turns that process into. I am going to send all of the information specific to my patient to an expert that has extensive experience in managing cases like this and they are going to provide me with a verbal and a written report that I can then put in my patient's record, show to the client, monetize and show that value to the client of. Hey, I consulted with an expert in this. Their experience, combined with my examination, leads us to these recommendations. Here is the official report from that and it gives that veterinarian who requested the service the opportunity to monetize that as well. Right, because they should be. It's very hard to go to your client and say, oh yeah, my roommate in vet school is a neurologist. Now I texted her. She said she likes Keppra, can I have $50? No one can monetize that, right, what are you going to put that in your medical record? Like, yeah, I called my old roommate and she said to do Keppra, but if you have like an actual consultation, A protocol.
Speaker 3:A protocol right and you submit, you get an actual form that goes in that patient's record. You have results. You have results from a diagnostic test that just happened to be a consultation and you can use that not only to make the best decisions for your patient but to you know, supplement your medical record and show that you're practicing the highest quality of medicine possible in that situation.
Speaker 2:Well, and give the pet owner the ability to make the decision. You know that's in the best interest of their. You know that their animal, that they're in charge of, that they're responsible for care what they might financially be able to do. You know, with my cat, 18 years old, had lymphoma and they said, well, we could see if it's. You know, I was wobbling around and it was in bad shape and you know I was like, well, do you want to determine if this is really lymphoma? Because there's really only a couple of ways we could see. If it's a brain, I think it's brain parasites they thought it may have been or or some neurology issues. They said, well, we could do a CT scan. I said, well, what's the CT scan cost me? And they said, well, it's going to be 2,500 bucks. And I was like, man, I love you, betty Boop, but it's a tough call to make at 18.
Speaker 2:And but you know, being able to offer the service and the idea and so you know, to your point again, kind of dumb it down, cause I'm a simple guy is hey, would you like me to call my buddy Steve, or would you like me to offer this service as part of our protocol that we put in place and we have a procedure for this and you know our cost to the practice to be able to, you know, in in. You know maybe you're in an urban area or a suburban area, but you know, I I see this really as you're offering a service to veterinarians who don't have access to this kind of. You know, here's a referral to a cardiologist who's a half an hour away. It's we don't just don't have access to this and and so would you like. You know we're now offering this service. So talk about the the you know talked about kind of building this inside the practice. What, what are some of the revenue? You know how to how to build this as a revenue stream and kind of finish that thought out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great point because when, if you're thinking about it from the perspective of a practice owner or a veterinarian that's trying to build their client base, build their practice, you've got multiple options with using teleconsulting to build revenue. So, first and foremost, the actual consult. Well, the nice thing is for people that are using teleconsulting, at least through Stratasite there's zero overhead, so it costs you nothing to sign up. There's no risk. You can sign up and never use it. It doesn't cost you a dime If you do use it. You only pay when you do a consult and, of course, you charge the client for that consult. So it costs you $0 at a baseline. Then you have the opportunity to mark it up so that you make some money from that transaction.
Speaker 2:You cover- I mean you could give vaccines away at cost, but you don't from that transaction you cover. I mean you could give vaccines away at cost, but you don't Right Exactly.
Speaker 3:You mark everything up. You should. You're covering your time.
Speaker 2:Cost of goods.
Speaker 3:The cost of your technician submitting the consult for you or however you do it, so you can make some money off of that, however much you want to mark it up, right. But then from that, if you had sent that patient to a specialist in another hospital, they're going to get there. That specialist is going to say all right, I want to do these tests, I want to prescribe these treatments and I want to do this procedure and I want you to come back for these rechecks. All of that revenue now goes to that specialist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's at the specialty clinic Right.
Speaker 3:You diagnose a one-year-old dog with seizures, you send them to a neurologist that for the next 10, 15 years of that dog's life, two, three, four times a year they're going to see that person for blood work, for refills, for checkups.
Speaker 2:When 80% of that could have been done in your practice. The blood work, the medication, like all of that stuff. Maybe there's some, maybe 20% of that care needs to be done at a referral center four hours away. But the parents, the client, get to make that decision. But then 80% of that work, that actually happened with my wife in the human world, right.
Speaker 2:So she was sick in 2016, she had cancer and we did a consult at Mayo Clinic and Mayo Clinic said the protocol that she's on for chemo you could do here, but we would recommend you know that's what we would have prescribed if you had come here at Mayo. But you know she's doing that at the local hospital and so you know, as a practice you can say well, we're giving money away because we're allowing all of that care to happen at a third-party facility versus happening at our facility. And so if we teleconsult some of these cases even if it's in a metro area where you could refer some of that out if you do the initial teleconsult, they could prescribe a protocol and you're doing the chemo on site, you're prescribing the specialty medication, specialty food, all the labs. All of that could be done on site by you and then you know, maybe the one visit a year by the specialist locally at the referral center for the one thing they need to be seen by hands on to maybe do the TPLO surgery or whatever.
Speaker 3:Right. So there's so much that you can keep in your practice, not only in terms of revenue but in terms of that relationship with that client, and so I think there's a lot of opportunities for practitioners to really benefit from using teleconsulting. Not only building revenue, keeping your clients in your clinic, keeping those relationships, there's also some degree of peace of mind that comes with having acquired a second opinion as well. I love a second opinion, especially on non-neurology things.
Speaker 3:I love a second opinion, especially on non-neurology things. It's funny I work one day a week at a general practice here locally just to kind of keep my skills up and have fun and see animals, and you should see the questions that I ask the guy who owns the practice. I'm like. So fleas what are we doing for fleas these days, Because it's been so long since.
Speaker 3:I've seen general practice stuff, so I love a second opinion. I'm all about consulting for anything outside of my area of expertise, so it's all about that kind of peace of mind of knowing that like, yes, not only do I think this is the right treatment for this patient, so does this expert in this field. I'm going to sleep well tonight, knowing that I did the best that I could for my patient.
Speaker 2:And, you know, at the end of the day you gave them the opportunity to decide, yeah, I'll do the small investment. You know, in the case of my cat, right Like, I don't think I would have spent $2,500. You know, ultimately we decided to have her put down when it got too bad, because that was the right decision to make. I wasn't ready to spend $2,500. But if they had said, well, we could do a teleconsult for $200 or $300, whatever that number is, I mean, I wasn't ready to write a $2,500 check for an 18-year-old cat who had, you know, most likely lymphoma, because that's not a good prognosis.
Speaker 2:But if they said, well, here's a $300 consult we could do with a neurologist, with somebody to say, yeah, here's the stuff, I probably would have written a check for $300 or $400 to do a consult, versus, you know, two or $3,000 for a CT scan and so, and also for the for the patient. You know, putting myself in cause. That's, you know, that's my world. I've never been a veterinarian. It's it's giving me peace of mind, knowing that I did everything I could do within my financial budget to say, yeah, I made the right decision, and giving those tools and resources to the pet owner for the pet care.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly, yeah, I mean. Most pet owners want to do what's best for their pet, and whether you can or can't afford something doesn't dictate whether you're making the right decision for your pet. It's all about being able to provide people with as much information as we can provide them and help them to make an informed decision, and a decision that they're comfortable with.
Speaker 2:Because as much as Betty Boop would talk to me and say water, I thought she would say in water when she's standing in the bathroom sink. We coached her for 18 years to say wow, wow, and she would meow to turn on the sink for her. She couldn't say that she was in pain. And so you know, that's as the pet owner hat because that's the only hat that I have is just, you know, trying to figure out how to do the best thing that we can for them, and that's why it was so interesting to hear that. You know, there's not, there's just not a lot of this out there.
Speaker 2:I think in the human health world there's a ton of you know. That's where I think the telemedicine world comes from. Is that's the easy keyword versus teleconsulting, because really, the veterinarian, the general practitioner, your vet, who you see every day, is the one doing all the prescribing and they're just phoning a friend and it sounds like. So let me put on my sales hat for a moment, because that's the hat that I wear when I'm not on the podcast. So you've developed a free platform that the consultant can sign up for for free to go check it out, that the general practitioner can go check out for free and just say ever need this, here's this platform that I could maybe use at some point in the future and then figure out how to monetize at my practice as an additional fee or service that we could charge yes, free. So that sounds like a pretty good deal.
Speaker 2:So for veterinarians out there who are listening to this stratocytecom S-T-R-A-T-O-C-Y-T-Ecom, go check it out. We'll have some of that information in the show notes and this, unfortunately, will not come out before VMX, but you're starting now. So you've spent a couple of years building this platform out and now you're out in the world starting to promote this platform. So you're at some of the national events and we'll have the information about how people can reach out to you online as well. So it's been awesome to have you on, samantha. Where can people find you online or reach out to you and your team?
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been a lot of fun. Yeah, any veterinarian can go to stratocyitecom and, like you said, set up a free account to check it out. We are on LinkedIn at Stratosite and we're also on Instagram at Stratosite. For the new year, we're launching some fun educational series.
Speaker 3:So, Instagram will be featuring every month. We'll be working through management of a different disease process and we'll have some exclusive content for the people that are signed up and part of the Stratasite community and we'll have some newsletters and things on LinkedIn as well, so we would love to have people come check us out.
Speaker 2:Well, awesome. Thanks so much, Samantha. Any last words of advice for a veterinarian out there who's thinking I don't know that I would ever want to do that. What would you say to them?
Speaker 3:Well, I would say that you really have nothing to lose by trying teleconsulting, especially if you are part of a platform that doesn't charge a subscription fee or anything like that, and that we, as specialists, are here not to make anyone feel bad about how they've managed a case previously, or to judge anyone or anything like that. We're all just here to collaborate and to provide support and encouragement for our colleagues and to bring the best level of care to every patient possible. And so we are veterinarians, we love veterinarians, we respect veterinarians and we really just wanted to build something that would make veterinarians lives better.
Speaker 2:So we we hope to accomplish that in the coming years, if you're in a specialist desert, like a food desert, if you're in a specialist desert somewhere in rural middle America, as we are in the upper Midwest, you know, or if it's three months to get in and a specialist in New York City, check out Stratasite. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, samantha, and, as always for all of our listeners, make sure to like, comment and review the podcast, Share it with your friends out there in the veterinary world, and we look forward to having you join us on a future episode. Thanks so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning in to Veterinary Blueprints. If you have any thoughts, questions or suggestions for an episode, I would love to hear from you. Email me at bill at butlervetinsurancecom. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and if you could do me a huge favor you know it helps with the algorithm. If you can like, share or comment on the post, leave a review, I would love it. Thanks for tuning in and until next time.
