The Case for Standardization: Why Your PIMS Codes Matter More Than You Think

Inconsistent PIMS codes don't just create an organizational headache — they undermine every financial, clinical, and operational decision that flows from your data. In this episode, we dig into what it actually costs your practice when everyone's coding differently, and why fixing it matters more than most teams realize.

From the classic dental coding dilemma (does that x-ray live under dentistry, radiology, or anesthesia?) to benchmarking chaos when practices aren't speaking the same language, our guests unpack the real downstream consequences — and share practical advice on where to start. Whether you're independent or part of a group, you don't have to overhaul everything at once. Clean, standardized data is what gives your team the clarity to make confident decisions at every level.

Host = Brenda Tassava Medina, CVPM, CVJ

Panelists:

• Nora Zarcone, VP, Sales and Revenue Growth at BitWerx
• Hannah Bates, Operations Support Specialist at Encore Vet Group
• Ben Spinks, Co-Owner & Managing Director at Tipp City Veterinary Hospital

Thank you to Purina for sponsoring today's episode!

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:10

On behalf of Purina, I want to discuss two specialized diets from Purina, the ProPlan Veterinary Diet EN and EN Fiber Balance. The EN formula is designed for general gastrointestinal support, featuring a balanced blend of soluble and insoluble fibers to promote healthy digestion and manage GI sensitivities. It's ideal for dogs experiencing gastrointestinal disturbances such as vomiting and diarrhea, pancreatitis, gastritis and enteritis, and inflammatory bowel disease. On the other hand, EN Fiber Balance takes it a step further with an enhanced fiber content specifically aimed at improving the microbiome. This formulation is particularly beneficial for dogs suffering from fiber responsive colitis, large bowel diarrhea, constipation, and diabetes. Both diets are crucial in managing GI health. To learn more, please visit www.proplanvet.com. Welcome aboard. You're listening to Flight Plan Quick Consults, your go-to podcast for veterinary insights that are fast, focused, and designed to elevate your practice. I'm your host, Brenda Tassima Medina from Encore Veterinary Consulting. Whether you're between appointments or heading into a strategy session, we've got takeoff ready tips, tools, and takeaways to keep your team soaring. So settle into your control panel as we set a course for the case of for standardization, why your PIMS codes matter more than you think. Today's panel includes Ben Spinks, Nora's Arconi, and Hannah Bates. Ben, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Yeah, thanks, Brenda. Uh yeah, my name is Ben. I've got about 22 years in the industry now. Uh home-based for me is north of Dayton, Ohio, at a companion animal practice. Uh on our campus, we have uh GP pet resort and soon-to-be-launched uh uh surgery uh center as well. Uh and then split my time with the team at Vedios. So we do uh marketing in the veterinary vertical. So that's that's me in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_03 2:28

Well, thanks for being with us today, Ben. Next up is Nora.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yes, thanks, Brenda. Uh, I've been in the industry, uh animal health over 26 years. I had uh various roles within the commercial um strategy space with a few different companies. Most recently, I worked um developing leaders and opening de novo practices with a small emerging group in the Southeast. Um, and here most recently I'm with Bitworks and we are a data company. Thrilled to be back, located in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I have two adult children.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

So thanks for um being with us today, Nora. And then our favorite operations support specialist, Hannah. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm with Encore Vet Group as an operations support specialist. That's what I do today. Um, but I have a 22 years in the industry, was a kennel kid, and spent a lot of time in practice that did that for a long time. Um, before I found myself at Encore, I also did acquisitions. So I have a little bit of a lot of a lot of dabbled in a lot of different things, you could say, in the industry. So I'm very excited to be here.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

Yeah, and I know that you've you've dug deep into PIMS codes over the last 12 months or so. So I'm excited to have you here today. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. All right, so our listeners have a couple of burning questions. Well, this is probably my burning questions because this has always driven me crazy because I started in human medicine when I was in high school and all through college. And so I've always compared like the way things work there with the way that we do things. And I remember when I first got elevated to inventory or manager and kind of looking at them, I'm like, these codes make absolutely no sense. What the heck? Um and I probably did what every newbie inventory manager does, which is let's just fix this. And we come up with our own set of codes and make it even worse. So my first question, and I'll kick this off to Ben, is what problems are we actually creating by not having standardized PIMS codes?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Oh boy. Uh yeah, that that could be a long list. Uh yeah, I I I think you know, for for me, that kind of uh aligns a lot with this kind of concept of data hygiene. Uh on the PIM side, you know, I think if you don't have that standardization, like like you said, very quickly, something that makes a ton of sense to you uh may not make sense to a peer or colleague. And if you guys are trying to compare data or work together or collaborate, um, you know, it gets really hard to compare things apples to apples and more or less talk the same language, you know, and then that could then snowball, you know, if if you're trying to sell your practice, you know, Hannah was just talking about acquisitions, you know, things can get really messy on that side as well. Uh so I think beyond some of those initial big issues, just being able to make decisions confidently, you know, like if we're looking at our data and in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, well, like I know we have this issue, or if we just I need to account for for these products because they're not in the right category, it just gets messy really quick. And it's, you know, more or less that whole garbage in, garbage out when it comes to data. The cleaner I think we can ensure our PIMS data is, the more downstream, you know, things are going to be accurate and we can be really confident in the decisions we're making.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

I love that phrase. Data hygiene. That's a keeper. That's a keeper, Ben. Um, what about you, Nora? What problems are we actually creating by not having this standardized?

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Yeah, I think that Ben hit on, you know, I think it really comes down to decision making, right? It's really hard to make decisions. You know, a lot of groups will have normalized data. And I love to talk about this having been in operations for years. Um, to your point, Brenda, like trying to create the code yourselves and have your code structure. Um, a lot of groups will have normalized data, so it's really just giving you some top line uh information there where standardized data is really allowing you to really go deeper. So you're making clinical decisions, financial decisions, operational decisions. Um, and you're able to do that in a much better way because you're not just having a whole set of codes that are like, okay, these are all dentals. Well, maybe my dentals include radiographs. Um, and so it allows you to dig a little bit deeper. And so those decisions really unlock a whole set of, you know, operational efficiencies, um, financial, and and so on and so forth. So I get really excited about it because it's it's just it's a mess, as Ben said. It can become a mess for sure. It feels overwhelming when you're in the practice and you're like, oh my gosh, I see 50 ways to spell German Shepherd.

SPEAKER_03 7:31

Yeah, I think you bring up a good point in dental, dentistry is an excellent example because people are like, okay, it's dental related. So do my dental x-rays go under dentistry or do they go under x-rays? And where do I put the anesthesia? And are we, you know, are we being consistent, which we're not. I'm I know that we're not.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:53

Um, Hannah, I know that you work with a lot of computer conversions, so you have a little bit of a different point of view, but what problems are we actually creating by not having this standardization?

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Sure. Um, I've I can speak to it on a couple different levels. I was thinking first on a practice level, um, you know, when you bring in new employees, being able to train them more efficiently, uh, because they're used to what they're seeing, it's not new terminology, things like that. It's really beneficial. It goes a long way. Um and then on a on a reporting side, being able to trust what you have. Um, even though it may be normalized in some of these groups, without it being standardized, we often have to manually normalize it. And it can be time consuming and incorrect because we're just people. So it's not always, it's not always that uh correct. And it's hard to feel confident what you're speaking on if if if it's not been standardized. Um and we're now seeing too with conversions, you know, we're trying to convert to new PIMs, and we have to normalize and clean up all of this, all of this data before we we move forward, and it is a mess. There is a lot of it. And uh if it was already standardized and we're already following something um there, it would make it go a lot smoother and feel a lot cleaner. We're also seeing a lot of new PIMs. Um they're integrating VET COVID into them for ordering platforms, and not having that standardization is making that integration piece almost impossible in some cases. Um, they don't have any of that one-to-one mapping. Um, and that that integration piece is so beneficial when it works. It saves so much time on inventory piece. It helps with that reporting piece on the inventory side. And if you can't map it, it it's why why have it, right? It's yeah, so nice once that's all completed. We're working on it heavily here. So hopefully soon.

SPEAKER_03 9:44

Well, and I know that like for independent practices out there, you know, they they get frustrated by the thought of a computer or a PIMS conversion, and then they get into the heat of it and it's like, why is this taking so long? Why is this, why is there all of this work? And I don't, I don't think they know what they're getting themselves into when they sign up for a PIMS conversion.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

No, most do not. It is a heavy lift, especially on the on the data and code side. And I think that's very easily overlooked. We think, oh, it's gonna be fun. I get to put in new templates and and you know, I can add new codes, maybe we didn't have before, but the actual back end of everything is really where the mess is, and and we're not always prepared for that.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

If if I may, and this this question might get edited out, uh, but purely out of my my own curiosity, um how for for for you, Nora and Hannah, are are you guys able to start like are you leveraging AI to kind of help facilitate some of that normalization now? Are are things at a point where that's useful on your end?

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Yeah, we we've actually that's a great question, Ben, because we've had a couple of groups that have started down that road to try to use AI and have circled back to having Bitworks help them. Our chief veterinary officer has over 20, uh 200 years actually of experience amongst her team where they've actually looked at medically grounded code through various, not just, you know, the AHI code of um actually it's not AHA, it's uh AHA VMG chart of accounts. Yeah, it's a chart of accounts, thank you. Um, along with some of academia to to look at that. But um we have some AI that is supporting the team in order for them to be able to um map quicker, um, because they are looking at over billions of codes and make that map. Yeah. And so and and it's a joint process between um the hospital and um Bitwork. So when you look at what a hospital is, you know, a lot of times it's easy to map those one-to-one when you're looking at products, but when you're looking at services, you really want that collaboration with the team because every hospital has a different way that they're looking at their codes and their surgeries and their descriptions. Um, and so, yes, the short answer is we are looking at using some AI, but it's helping to supplement our team's efficiency. Um, we still have human mappers that are helping through that process because there's so many codes. Um, and every hospital is looking at services differently.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

Interesting. What about you, Hannah?

SPEAKER_02 12:35

We're doing about the same thing. Uh, we have uh like a mapping, an AI mapping tool. We have about a 75% success rate with it. So that additional 25% has to be manually mapped. Um, we're working really hard to make it higher because we are gonna have to lean on our practice leaders to map it as much as I'd love to do it for them. Like Nora said, those service codes, their names are so wildly different, practice to practice. Um, but it has been extremely helpful. It's made a huge difference.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

Yeah, Nora reminded me of you know, when she said the AHA VMG chart of accounts. That's my that's my ideal world is for everybody to be using the aha chart of accounts on this on the service code side and actually make it, you know, just fit seamlessly into the PL. Um, but be consistent and have a code and ever you know, and it makes sense to everybody. So that's that's the dream.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

I think one thing for us to point out for the work that we're doing, which I feel like is exciting, is it's if we have a group that really wants a customized code structure, they can have that. We can map that on the back end so that it's still clean, but it's showing facing what they want to see in the language they want to see it. And so it keeps um efficiencies in check. There, the change management is a lot easier for those hospital teams. So I just want to make that point because I know some some veterinarians and in in animal health, we get really nervous about do we have, should we have a unified code structure for everyone, like we see on the human side. Um I'm not sure there were that were there, but we can make it so that you can still see it in the way you want to see it. You don't have to all be on the same PIMs and you don't have to all have the same codes. Um, it can still be mapped on the back end. Um, and I think that's really an important differentiator.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

Yeah, thank you for that. Hannah, I'm gonna start with you with the second question. Is standardization realistic for independent practices? And where should they even start? Because it does seem so overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

I don't think it is. I I I definitely think it is. I think though is to identify what their goal is with it. Um, you know, with groups, right? We want to normalize the data. That's that's the big piece of it. Um, but I think as I spoke to originally, having it more standardized can help with some of those training pieces. Um I know when I was in practice, the number of clients who wanted, you know, a second opinion or something like that, and they're looking at an invoice with new terminology they've never seen before. Um so having it that way is is really beneficial on a practice level as well. Um to get started, I I think the AHA BMG uh code of accounts is the place to start. It's what we're using as well with Encore. Um, and like with Nora, we're not changing the descriptions. We're just using those descriptions to map to a code to then get us there. But um it's giving us a it's giving us a good foundation, right? A place to really start building from and go from. And I think that's the best first step for anybody to take when they're doing it.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

Awesome. Ben, um, you're you're in VMG, you're actually in one uh of the groups that I facilitate. And so when I think of independent practices and standardization, how beneficial would it be to you within the group to have all the independent practices standardized? And and then when you think about that, where do you think they they should start?

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, no, great question. Um Yeah, certainly uh uh VMG and our participation in that particular GPO really helped push us towards the standardization. Uh because you know, right away when we joined the group, it it was obvious how much the open book financials were going to be beneficial, you know. And it it's always been helpful to have industry benchmarks, you know. Like I still uh uh lament uh the the loss of some of the AHA um uh data that they're not publishing quite the same way now. But the there is a lot of breakdown in there. But it's really nice to be able to be in a group setting at a GPO meeting and and even within our group, I want to say we have 15 or 20 members, you know, there's gonna be some people in the group that really align closely with our practice. You know, they have a similar model. Uh, we have um additional pet care services on campus, maybe they do do too. Uh, being able to identify the similarities and then also be confident that when we're talking about our numbers together, that when they're talking about labor numbers or their specific cog categories, we're already talking apples to apples, it just makes the conversation that much more meaningful because you're not having to have that constant filter of like, well, I wonder if they do it the same way we do, or do you include this or not include that? So it for us, you know, being part of VMG um was kind of the catalyst. Um in terms of the actual logistics, I mean, yeah, it's not something I think anybody's gonna start a Monday on and be excited about doing. You know, it's not like, man, I can't wait till we do that standardization. Um, but I I think as long as it's tackled methodically, it was very manageable. You know, our our PIMS categories were already pretty closely aligned. You know, we made a few adjustments on the PIM side. Uh, we definitely had to make a few more adjustments on the QuickBooks side. That's the accounting platform that we use. Um, but we really just started with a spreadsheet. It's like, hey, okay, here's our current chart of accounts. Here's the the the where we're trying to head, you know, here's where there's alignment, here's a few things that need name changes, we need to create some new accounts. So it was just a process of being really methodical and going through it. Um, but now that we're on the other side of that, and not only can we talk with our peers, you know, in our GPO, but we work with a vet-specific bookkeeping company, VetBooks. We work with a vet-specific accounting firm, KSM. We all speak the same language now, you know. So it's really easy for our data to move inside that ecosystem. Uh, and everybody just be really confident that it's it is what it's supposed to be, and it's easy to compare to everybody else. So we've we've really gained a lot out of it.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

All right. If you can do it, so can other independent practices.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Absolutely. Just one code or line at a time.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Line at a time. Nora, um, I know that you talked about groups. What about the independent practices? Is standardization realistic and where should they start from your perspective?

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, I I think it is realistic. I mean, some of the points we talked about today, just having clean data and being able to make decisions, I mean, it gives you some clarity around um maybe you want to look at different types of services. And um maybe you have an owner that wants to mentor another associate, and it's really hard to dig, to dig in if you're not if you're just getting top layer data. Um, I think um the first, the first idea, I think one, you don't have to go at it alone. So it can feel daunting. It can feel like a lot if you um if you don't have the resources to do it. Um, there are groups out there or or you know, companies that can help you um stand that up and create it. Um, I also think, you know, there are areas that are just a little bit easier if you start to look at maybe what you're using the most of. So you know that these are the services, these are the products that I'm using the most of and tackling that first. I like products personally because they are easier to map. Um, and then and then going from there and digging in, at least not having your duplicates, right? I mean, you're we all can think of, you know, Serenia, we're using it in four-pack, we're using it in one tablet, we're using it, you know, and then the inventory is not back, you know, matching on the back end. So um, so I think those are the areas that I think might be easier to start with.

SPEAKER_03 20:42

Awesome. Thank you for that. It gives people some direction on where to go. I want to thank you all for flying with us on Flight Plan Quick Consults. And I want to also thank Karina, our sponsor of today's episode. If today's insights helped you climb to new heights, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with your crew. Until next time, keep your mission clear, your team aligned, and your practice soaring.