Email the Author
You can use this page to email E. E. (Chip) Ponsford, III, DVM and Mark Graban about Lean Veterinary Practice Management.
About the Book
What would it mean to your veterinary practice if you found a new, teachable and learnable system that promotes the following:
- Using operational excellence as a business strategy
- Using an objective, scientific, systems-based model to manage your practice
- Defining your perfect practice and developing a methodology to pursue that vision
- Increasing value from your client's point of view
- Utilizing all resources, including doctors and staff, more effectively
- Working relentlessly to reduce or eliminate waste
- Building a culture of everyone improving their jobs every day
- Standardizing work to improve flow and quality
- Making problems visible and reacting quickly
- Understanding problems and solving them at their root cause(s)
- Respecting workers and all stakeholders
The Toyota Production System, or Lean as it is known in the West, has accomplished this in virtually every industry including human healthcare. Can it do the same for the practice of veterinary medicine? There is no reason it can't! Lean may very well be the new paradigm for veterinary management in the future.
Lean is not about molding your practice into some expert’s idea of a “cookie cutter, benchmark” copy of practices from other parts of the country. Lean understands that you are the expert of your practice. Your practice, your demographics and your staff are all unique. Lean is about making your veterinary practice the best your veterinary practice it can be.
Utilizing the same mindsets and methodologies veterinarians and their staff use to diagnose and treat their patients, Lean Veterinary Practice Management will help you figure out how to accomplish all of this, and more, for your practice.
About the Authors
Dr. Ponsford (TAMU ‘80) owned a small animal hospital in El Paso for 27 years. He spent five years with a national corporate practice as Chief of Staff and was a top 20 producer. For several years, Dr. Ponsford has studied the Toyota Production System (Lean) and how it might be applied to veterinary medicine. He (with Lean Healthcare expert Mark Graban) has written articles on Lean and spoke at the 2016 TVMA Convention. He and Mr. Graban have been accepted to speak at the 2019 AVMA Leadership Conference. Dr. Ponsford has started the first blog dedicated to Lean in veterinary medicine at www.leanvets.com. He currently lives and works in the Dallas, TX area.
Mark Graban is an internationally recognized consultant, author, professional speaker, and blogger. Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus. For his full bio, visit www.MarkGraban.com.
Mark's newest book (2023) is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation.
He is the author of the book Lean Hospitals, which was the first healthcare book selected as a recipient of the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award. Mark has also co-authored Healthcare Kaizen and was the editor of the anthology Practicing Lean, published through LeanPub. He published Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More in 2018, originally on LeanPub.