“On Labor Day of 1986, I read a copy of ‘Today’s Professional’ and decided that I really needed to look into Sterling,” says Dr. George Malnati, a practicing veterinarian for 25 years.
“At that time I had been in practice for 15 years. After graduating veterinary school in 1971, I had practiced for five and a half years in Western Massachusetts and burnt out. I sold that practice and went and did my residency in veterinary surgery and went back into practice. Five or six years later it was the same thing.”
“I have always run my own business so I have studied practice management since I was in veterinary school, picking up bits and pieces, but what I had learned wasn’t good enough. I was stressed and burnt out, and I wasn’t able to take time off. I didn’t want to go to work anymore, I was losing my compassion for my patients and I was becoming impatient with clients.
“I inherently knew there was a better way to manage which would benefit me, my patients and my clients but I had not found it. And then one day I received a copy of Today’s Professional. I said, ‘Hey, now this is interesting, they’re talking about actually measuring performance, and these guys seem to actually get you in control of your practice, so you’re not on the receiving end of all the bad blows.'”
Dr. Malnati liked what he read enough that he watched the introductory seminar.
“What I got from the seminar is that Sterling wanted to train me—they weren’t going to dictate to me, but actually train me – to take control of my own practice and get the results I wanted.
“I could see a parallel between what they were offering me as far as practice management was concerned and how I learned during my surgical residency. The end result of that residency was that my skill in surgery during residency increased an infinite amount.
“When I did the Sterling program,” says Dr. Malnati, “that’s what happened to my management abilities; in fact, there was perhaps an even greater change in my ability to manage.
“Communication, the first course I did, was the very first thing I applied; I was just amazed at how much my ability to communicate had increased.
“The next thing was having a way to measure production in the veterinary hospital that wasn’t just numbers, which actually got into the quality and the viability of the product we were producing.
“As a result, I more than tripled the practice,” says Dr. Malnati. “I tripled the physical size of my building to an animal hospital that I think is an ideal one to practice in, and since 1989, I’ve been able to successfully take off 2-4 months a year.
“Perhaps best of all, the success of the practice, and the ability to handle my affairs has spilled over into my private life. I am now happily married for the first time in my life.”
