Epi 66:

[00:00 to 02:00] Why Your Employment Contract Matters More Than You Think 

What if some of the stress and frustration you're experiencing at work could have been addressed before you even accepted the job? Whether you're a new grad reviewing your first offer, an associate considering your next opportunity, or simply a veterinary professional or support team member who wants to better understand your employment contract or agreement, today's episode is for you.

This is a part one of a two-part series on veterinary contracts. We're talking compensation, scheduling, expectations, what's actually negotiable, what questions to ask, and often overlooked details that can have a huge impact on your paycheck, quality of life, and overall career satisfaction. Let's get into it.

Welcome to Stop the Burnout, a podcast for veterinary professionals who love medicine but are exhausted by the people pressure, expectations, and the constant mental load that comes with it. If you've ever thought, "I shouldn't feel this drained doing something I care about," you're not alone, and you're definitely not broken.

I'm Dr. Amber Parks, a veterinarian turned stress and burnout coach, and here we talk about the stuff that no one taught us, like how to actually break the stress and burnout patterns once and for all, and how to stay in this profession without losing yourself. You won't find bubble bath, toxic positivity, or self-care fluff pretending to be the solution here.

Let's get into it.

Welcome back to another episode of Stop the Burnout. We're doing something a little different today, and I hope it is mutually beneficial for those of you listening. And what we're doing, we're gonna talk a little on... Well, maybe not a little, kind of a lot, on contracts. And not just contracts and the black and white of that, but also, being a podcast that we're focusing on trying to break the burnout cycle and heal and recover from burnout, a lot of the things that I work with my coaching clients, I see that unbeknownst to them, the things that have come up that are challenges at work, some of those things, maybe potentially could have been in a contract and outlined in a contract.

So we're gonna talk a little bit about everything, though. I will share, too, my experience with hiring doctors, seeing contracts, seeing resumes and then also what I work with my coaching clients too. This comes up, sometimes they're either negotiating a leadership position or they're renewing their contract or they've decided to leave the place that they're at and they wanna look for another job.

And so then it's like, okay, well, we gotta make sure that we're looking for and asking for the right things in our contract. So I'm gonna share all of that juicy stuff today. I don't know. You know I'm a talker. I'll get through what I can. It might be a two-parter. I don't know. We will see.

 

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[02:00 to 06:00] Understanding ProSal and Veterinary Compensation

Okay. So the first thing we'll talk about, we all love, right? Money. So we're gonna talk about salary.

Now, this podcast episode, though, I will say is beneficial for anyone, because it's gonna be through the lens of a veterinarian. However, anyone that is signing a contract or having an employment agreement, right?

So even as a support team member, I think some of these are important because things like, I'll talk a little bit about benefits and job description, right? All of that is hugely important. So hopefully you stay around.

Okay. Number one, salary.

Now, this is something, obviously everyone is gonna be paid a little bit different.

There are a lot of practices that will do ProSal. So this is for my people in the US. This is the most common. I'll be quite honest, I don't know what the pay structure is internationally.

But ProSal is essentially you get a base plus production.

And here's what I've learned, and I'm sharing this with you.

And you can Google this. If this is, like, I don't wanna give too many specifics or throw numbers around because as you know, I'm neurodivergent, and when I start hearing numbers but I can't write it down, especially if I'm driving, my eyes glaze over, I checked out, I have no idea what you're talking about.

If you want specific examples, go to AI. I know if you don't like it, this is helpful for this. ChatGPT, and ask it certain questions. Like, "If I make this and this, how is this calculated?" Right? That's the fastest way to do it.

So base plus production.

Some people, I guess, could be compensated on strictly just production, but the most common that we see is a ProSal model.

Now, you have to be careful because ProSal has been the term that was coined, I believe by Oppenheimer. Mark Oppenheimer, I believe, is his name. Again, if you Google anything on ProSal, you will see that come up. He's like the grandfather of ProSal.

Any articles by him are gonna be pretty good.

This was... He came up with this, I wanna say, around 2005. It was way early 2000s, and people have changed and manipulated it and tweaked it, but they still call it ProSal.

So my point is, if an employer says, "Hey, we're gonna pay you on ProSal," that's excellent.

The biggest thing you can ask is, "Explain it to me."

Like, if you're in a job interview or whatever, you can have them verbally explain it.

But ultimately, before you sign anything, you want to have it written in the contract how that is calculated, and better yet, give me an example in the contract itself.

I have a coaching client who was renewing her contract, and they wanted to change some numbers, the owner did, and it wasn't really well defined how the ProSal was getting calculated.

So this is actually some of the work I do with my one-on-one clients.

We kind of did a deep dive, and I shared what I knew. I actually wrote out everything for her, and she did a lot of good research on her own as well. I kind of directed her what the best things to look at.

And bottom line is it wasn't well defined, and what we pulled from the true ProSal method and how she was actually being compensated were two different things on many levels.

So people can say... And that's the other thing is some people, practice owners too, may not know, right? They may be like, "Oh, this is ProSal because this is what I've seen, and this is what it is," but it may not truly be ProSal.

So the bottom line is really make sure that it is well defined in your contract how that is calculated.

 

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[06:00 to 10:00] Production Calculations and Common Pay Mistakes

The other thing was, I have had some clients where they were being calculated ProSal, but the numbers that were being used, the production numbers from the doctor, were kind of looking at average client transactions and making generalizations off of that.

And I was like that's helpful, but if you're trying to predict what your production numbers are gonna be...

And by production numbers, for sake of this episode, by production numbers, I mean what is the amount that you bill out.

I'll use those interchangeably.

So if you're a veterinarian and you bill out $30,000 for the month, that's what you billed out.

There are certain ways of looking at that, and that's a gross, meaning that's before any taxes are taken out.

ProSal is based on your gross production.

So the average client transaction really is not beneficial.

The other thing was that they were pulling her production after taxes.

So to give you an example, if a client comes in and maybe it was annuals with a side of skin infection.

I'm in Florida. That's what we see a lot, right? "Oh, he's got a little irritation."

You're like, "Oh, God. Okay."

So say that you did the exam, you did some blood work because we're gonna send out for heartworm test and some senior wellness, and you're gonna send home maybe an antibiotic.

That antibiotic, and again this is gonna vary based on the state, and this is a generalization for the US, but that antibiotic is gonna have tax on it for the most part.

Goods and services typically won't, or excuse me, services typically won't, like an exam or like a skin cytology.

But the actual goods or medications that are going home will be taxed.

So what was happening was that they were taking the taxes out.

And is it minimal? Yes.

But obviously you see 20 appointments a day, it can add up.

So they were taking the tax out and then giving her that percent of production.

So wherever state you're in, if that's like 7%, 10%, whatever, they were essentially not giving her the money that she deserved.

They were taking out that tax and being like, "Okay. Well, if this medication was $20 but the tax was $3, we're gonna give you that you made $17 and not $20."

So that's where you gotta be really specific.

The reason there is... Actually, I won't go into it because that could go down a rabbit hole, but there's reasoning why you should be paid on pre-tax and not post-tax.

A lot of this is we don't have control as a producer if you're a veterinarian.

You don't have control over the taxes.

But as a business, in a way they kind of do.

So again, I'll leave it at that.

But that's hugely important, right?

Make sure you're being paid on gross production, and make sure that is really well defined.

 

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[10:00 to 15:00] Tracking Your Production and Contract Transparency

The next thing is it's so important, and I find this is probably a little bit better on the corporate side, but I don't know one hundred percent, so if you're looking at a contract with corporate, cross your Ts, dot your Is.

But are you able as a producer to pull reports to know what your numbers are?

So what I mean, and I'll give you some examples from way back when.

When I was an associate and I was paid on ProSal, we used Avimark.

So I could go in and I could pull a report. I could pull a report for the day, the month, the year, whatever timeframe I wanted, and I could see what my numbers were.

I could see what the other doctor's numbers were too, which is fine, right?

Because that's transparency.

So to be able to pull those reports and know what those numbers are is important.

Because I've had some coaching clients where I'll be like, "I don't need to know your specific numbers, but do you know your numbers? What is your percent production? What's your number that you're going to be the minimum amount that you need to bill out before you start making production every month?"

And they don't know.

But they also can't find out.

I don't think that practice owners are doing this maliciously.

I think that it's an afterthought.

I do see where, as a practice owner, you wanna have certain parameters around who can pull reports, who can see certain numbers, can they manipulate those numbers.

That's obviously important.

But I thought it was fabulous when I was an associate that we all could pull our numbers, and it was very transparent.

Again, that's gonna vary based on the practice management software.

But I think having in your contract that you have access to reports that you can pull on your own and be able to review them is a no-brainer.

I know in Avimark, we could break it down by provider. We could break it down by how many dentals everybody did. You can look at all those things.

But I have run into where some of my clients can't just pull those numbers.

And I'm like, damn. That's unfortunate because we want transparency on both sides.

Certainly, as a practice owner, you want to be like, "Hey, I'm not hiding anything."

But you also wanna protect so nothing gets manipulated.

Not to say everything is about production, but it's really frustrating if you have a crazy busy month, and then you realize you missed production by a couple hundred bucks.

That's like maybe one appointment.

That is nice to know where you're at.

Again, I do think as a whole there's a lot of nuance to it, but doing good business is typically good medicine as well.

And I don't mean selling people things they don't need.

But if you are in a pretty healthy practice that is continuing to grow, then you should have no problem meeting that production.

For example, myself, when I worked at the practice that I worked at out of vet school, I worked there for 10 years.

So I started on a base plus production, and I started making my production about six months into it.

So six months into starting that job, I started making not just my salary, but now production.

And for good or for worse, there's benefits as time goes on and you're reviewing contracts to increase your base.

But we never really did that, which, like I said, that's a whole other conversation.

But six months in, I was making production, and I never missed a month in the 10 years I was there, even if I took a vacation.

So there's pros and there's cons to all that, but that's to say it's totally doable, right?

And yes, we were a growing practice, but we had ebbs and flows in our growth.

So essentially, and again I'm not gonna do a deep dive into this, but essentially with ProSal too, you're going to want to have your doctors make production because then they're essentially paying for themselves.

There's another percentage and a calculation that you're looking at with your yearly amount that you have billed out, and essentially, does your package, so salary, benefits, all that stuff, mean you're paying for yourself?

That's part of the ProSal thing, but that's kind of an aside.

You can Google that and look at it.

 

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[15:00 to 18:00] Why Contract Clarity Protects Both You and Your Employer 

To get back on track. So can you pull reports? Hugely important, and I think that should be included in the contract.

How do I pull a report, right? Because if it's in the contract, the other thing we have to remember is if it's in the contract, then it's a lot more black and white, and there's less gray.

I'm sure a lawyer somewhere could probably pull some sort of gray area out of that. I'm not a lawyer. All the stuff that I'm talking about today is purely from my experience and working with coaching clients. I'm not one to review a contract. Definitely get a professional, whomever that is, a lawyer or whatever, to review that.

But these are some things that if you know this stuff, by the time you go and talk to a lawyer, it hopefully will decrease the cost of a lawyer because you've already hammered out a lot of the stuff that you either want in the contract or need to have, so that you're not just starting from square one.

So that's why knowing what to even include or to have, I think is hugely important.

Okay. So pulling reports and how to do that I think is really... that's a no-brainer.

The other thing you have to consider is that, and this is something I have seen, and everyone's gonna have little mixed views on this, but for support staff, right? So if you're a doctor and you're seeing employee pets, most of the time, because employees are getting a discounted rate, then you won't be... it won't be put under a doctor. In other words, no doctor's gonna get production for that, right?

Because it's already at a discounted rate. If we pay you production on that, we're actually losing money, and the perk of being an employee and getting a discount on your pet care is one of the perks, right?

So just know that because I know some places where you start seeing employee pets and you're like, "Oh my gosh, that could be several appointments a day that you're not getting paid for."

Again, it's a little give and take, right?

So you as a doctor are probably getting a significant discount for your pets as well.

There is a law around that with the IRS. I'm not touching that. But you can look that up.

So just know that if you feel like you're seeing multiple pets or there's a pet that has a huge chronic illness and it's always in the hospital, that's just something to keep in mind that you're probably not gonna be compensated for that.

If that becomes an issue or you think that might be an issue, that might be something to discuss and have in the contract.

 

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[18:00 to 22:00] Understanding House Accounts and Production Credit

The other thing is when we talk about production and what is getting billed out to the doctor or to the house.

We used to call it the house, meaning the house account where there is no doctor.

So a lot of times prescription foods, if someone comes up to pick another bag of CD up, that's gonna go under the house because the food, there really isn't a huge margin typically, but also they're not asking the doctor can they pick this up.

A doctor doesn't get involved.

So the benefit of knowing what gets put under the doctor and what gets put under the house is obviously if you're getting paid on production, you wanna make sure that the production is being assigned appropriately.

We, in my experience, which was great, got a report after every day.

You don't necessarily have to do that, but I could see, oh yeah, I saw this pet and it had an exam and had all this other stuff, and maybe they picked up something that was over the counter that wouldn't be something I would get credit for, so it would go under the house.

But oh geez, by the way, they mistakenly put everything else, all the other charges like the exam, the skin cytology, the ear cytology under the house, so I didn't get the production for that.

So it was, as a doctor, as a producer, your responsibility to go through and check that.

If there was ever a discrepancy, I would just go, "Hey, this is..."

They would either change it or they would look into it if they needed more information.

So it's important that the rest of the staff is on board because yes, you can do your checks and balances, but think of transactions that happen where you're not directly involved.

Maybe the client is picking up a medication that you prescribed three days ago.

You didn't know they came today and picked it up, and by mistake that medication was put under the house and it wasn't put under you.

You wouldn't even know that the client came to pick up that medication unless you had a list of all those transactions.

So yeah, it can be a lot of work, but to know... I've gone into practices that are like, "What? A doctor? You have to put it under a doctor's?"

I'm like, "Oh my God."

It's just doing a lot of work after the fact.

For Avimark, you could change it. Granted, only certain people had the permissions to change doctor initials.

But also, if you're going back and redoing stuff, that's taking time and money to do that.

So if the staff can be on board and they know that certain things should go under certain doctors, then that's hugely important.

 

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[22:00 to 24:30] Define Production Rules in Writing

So to have that conversation and to ask, I think, is also important.

Especially for me, I was a new doctor coming in in a solo practice.

It didn't really matter because everything went under the one doctor they had there.

But me coming on board was totally something new that the staff... there was a learning curve.

It has to be addressed.

You can't just assume that people are gonna know what to do.

So that can be a conversation to have as well.

And in that conversation, when you go Google ProSal, you'll see that there's a list of what goes under the doctor and what goes under the house or the clinic.

I think having that piece of paper in your contract is hugely important.

You can tweak it however you want.

If you wanted to put every single time someone picks up prescription food, it goes under a doctor, then you can do that.

But the thing is, can we have this be standardized so both parties agree and we have this in the contract?

Because if you're like, "Oh, the last place I worked, the prescription food always went under a doctor," and then you go for a new job and you're really good and enjoy having nutrition talk, and you're sending home food with almost every patient, which is great, whatever works for you.

But if you're not getting compensated for that, and you think you're getting compensated, and then you're like, "Holy shit..."

If that's not written down, they may say, "Oh, well, that's ProSal. If you look it up, this is how a lot of ProSal does."

Which is true.

But if it's not defined and it isn't laid out like a spreadsheet showing what goes under the doctor and what goes under the house account or hospital account, that's gonna be huge.

Otherwise it's left up to interpretation, and you don't really have a leg to stand on if it's not well defined.

 

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[24:30 to 27:00] Everything in a Contract Is Negotiable

The other thing to think about too is will you be paid if a client doesn't pay?

The short answer I would think is no, at least that's what I've always seen.

So you'd wanna know, does a practice typically let clients carry a balance?

Probably not so much in this day and age, but if you are privately owned and you have a practice owner who routinely is comfortable with letting clients carry a balance, they might not even think twice.

Generally, in my experience, I can think of a case where both my boss at the time and myself worked on this pet, and it was a nightmare to say the least.

We ended up taking the dog home, me for a night, my boss for a night, for the weekend.

Guys, this was like a decade and a half ago, okay? We would've just sent it to the ER nowadays.

The lady totally stiffed us on the bill.

My boss was awesome. He let her go through a payment plan initially.

Single mom, didn't have a lot of money.

I was like, "Whatever. We got to help the pet."

But if that's a chronic thing at the place you're gonna work at, that might be an issue because you're not getting paid for that work.

Again, it's not all about the money, but there's nothing worse than working your ass off and then, "Oh yeah, those two appointments you saw today, you didn't get paid for that."

So there are a lot of moving parts, and you have to be aware of that too.

Do they hold a long list of accounts receivable?

That might be a conversation to have.

The other thing too is if you ask me, everything's negotiable.

Every fucking thing.

And what I see a lot of times, and I'm guilty of this too, is that the mindset when we get a contract is, "Okay, everything looks good."

Maybe this one thing wasn't what I wanted, but whatever.

And we don't negotiate.

Now think of most likely this contract being created by an employer.

It's gonna be skewed to protect them, just in general.

So I don't think it's ever wrong to negotiate.

The worst thing they can do is say no.

You might feel embarrassed.

It doesn't fucking matter.

It's a contract.

You have every right and responsibility, and it's much better to ask and get a no than to not know and wonder, or get resentful because you wish this one thing was different and it's not.

 

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[27:00 to 30:00] Salary, Schedule, and Protecting Your Time

I have another coaching client right now who was renewing her contract, and she was told, "Hey, this base pretty much never changes."

She was getting essentially a promotion.

"You're getting paid this base, so don't really ask questions."

Her badass self asked for a higher base.

She was getting more responsibility.

She was gonna have more work.

And they gave it to her.

It was a 10 percent increase.

So don't... Yes, we hear these things, but just ask, please.

Please don't sell yourself short.

Especially women, but I think a lot of people in vet med, we are really good at selling ourselves short.

So please ask because even if they say, "Hey, this never changes," look for my client. It definitely did.

So keep that in mind.

Next thing is salary when it comes to your vacation time.

So if you get PTO, sick leave, whatever.

But I have seen where some people will work outside of their regular contract schedule.

So have this in your contract.

"Hey, I work roughly 38 to 40 hours a week," or "four 10-hour shifts."

Have it defined.

Because if there's nothing about how many hours you're working, then you could be working 60 hours and getting paid the same base.

Or sometimes it could work against you where they say, "Hey, you only worked an average of 30 hours."

Maybe you were slower at work and they sent you home early.

Or your last three appointments canceled.

If you go below from full time to part time, you can lose some of those benefits.

So having that defined in your contract is really important too.

Having your schedule, and knowing that schedules can change, is one thing.

But there's a big difference between 35 hours and 50 hours, especially in your capacity to do that.

 

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[30:00 to 32:00] Extra Shifts, Relief Pay, and Protecting Your Compensation 

What if you aren't making production that month and you don't bill out your minimum, but you've worked that extra day?

It's essentially like working for free because you didn't get compensated any more for that because you didn't get a percentage, right? You didn't get a bonus that day. But then you also weren't paid different, so you literally worked an extra day and didn't get compensated.

So what I have seen is that sometimes if certain timeframes are put as parameters in the schedule, like, "Hey, you work between this many hours and this," or go over...

No, that'll be too confusing.

Yeah, we'll stick with my original plan.

So if you work over a certain amount, then you're paid either as a relief doctor, which some hospitals will put in that contract.

Like, if you work over a certain number of days or hours, then we'll pay you like we would pay a relief doctor per hour, right? So we're almost considering you a relief doctor for that shift.

And that's fine, well and dandy, right? Because then you're getting paid, and it's not just assumed.

The other thing is that having what that number is is important.

Are you gonna pay me like a relief doctor? Great.

Is there a set amount for the day?

Am I paid hourly?

All of that is great if that's in your contract because then it leaves less up to interpretation.

 

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[32:00 to 33:00] PTO Deductions Should Never Be a Surprise

The other thing that I have seen is that if you have PTO or you go above your paid time off, then pulling money from your check so that if you're taking more days off, it works the other way, right? You're not being compensated the same amount. You're getting money taken out.

The problem is, when I have seen that, there wasn't an amount.

They were like, "We are just gonna take money out of your check as we see fit."

What?

So that was a client of mine, so she and her boss agreed.

Okay, yeah, not that they would've been pulling some crazy amount if she took an extra day beyond PTO, but how much are you gonna take out of my check?

Let's have that written down so both parties understand because otherwise you might just get a check that is significantly less, and they're like, "Yeah, we just made up this number," right?

That's not fair to you, so having that written down is gonna be really, really important.

 

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[33:00 to End] Closing Thoughts and Preview of Part Two

Now, I think... So we're gonna do two parts, because you know your girl here, she's a talker.

So all of this, and this is a lot to digest.

So if you're listening to this, if you're driving, that's okay. Obviously, it's a podcast.

You can come back to it.

Take some notes when you're not driving that maybe you have questions, or you're like, "Oh, this is like... I didn't even think of these things, and now that I'm maybe looking for a new job, I wanna be sure that I'm covering all my bases there."

But again, this is some of the work that I do specifically with my one-on-one clients.

So if you're interested in what that looks like, not just for the chronic stress and burnout aspect, but also help on what do I ask for on the contract, I can certainly help you with that.

Again, I'm not a lawyer.

I am not a contract expert.

I'm just going off my experience and what I've seen, and just have a little more reps under my belt of the things that I've seen.

That's where I absolutely can help you.

So if you're interested in that, I will put the link in the show notes.

You can apply, or if you're on Instagram, you can DM me the word apply, A-P-P-L-Y, at my Instagram handle, which is @dr.amberparks, A-M-B-E-R P-A-R-K-S, and I will send you the application.

And then once that is filled out, I'll send you my link, and we can get a complimentary burnout breakthrough session scheduled, and we can talk about all the things, right?

It usually doesn't just stop at contracts.

So I hope that was helpful.

Please feel free to share this episode with a new grad maybe.

Some of them probably have already looked and have secured jobs and contracts, but it never hurts.

Or your friend who wants to jump ship at her clinic and she would love to hear this episode and get more information on what to ask for in a contract.

All right, guys.

Next time, I'm gonna do the two-part series.

Next time, we're gonna go into things like benefits, sign-on bonuses, also what to ask for so that you can help prevent your chronic stress and burnout, what can go in a contract that can help with that.

So we'll go into that.

All right, guys.

Thanks so much.

I will see you on the next episode.