2023 AAHA Technician Utilization Guidelines

Are you leaving credentialed veterinary technicians on the bench when they could be star players?

Published Sep 30, 2023

Guidelines at a Glance

Credentialed veterinary technicians (CrVTs) are a valuable resource for a veterinary practice, but their skills, education, and experience are often not being used to their full potential. Optimal utilization of credentialed veterinary technicians can benefit the entire veterinary team by supporting professional longevity, mutual trust and collaboration, improved patient care, and financial sustainability. The 2023 AAHA Technician Utilization Guidelines outline the steps you can take right now to improve credentialed veterinary technician utilization in your practice.

These guidelines include practical tools to help implement optimal utilization, including:

Goal worksheets
Workflows by role for everyday clinical examples
Veterinary team member utilization assessment tools
Examples of levels and skills for professional growth and increased learning potential for credentialed veterinary technicians
Case examples showing optimal utilization
Open-ended questions to structure conversations around improving utilization

3 Takeaways

Credentialed veterinary technicians cite lack of utilization as a top reason for leaving the profession, along with burnout and decreased job satisfaction.
Proper utilization is crucial for optimizing team efficiency, which in turn can increase access to veterinary services, improve patient care, and address staffing and retention problems.
Using credentialed veterinary technicians to the full extent of their education and training contributes to financial sustainability. Practices where veterinarians rarely perform tasks that credentialed veterinary technicians can, and should, do show an average revenue increase of 36%.

2 Actions

Recognize that the causes of poor utilization often stem from lack of knowledge and learn about what tasks and procedures credentialed veterinary technicians can legally perform in your area.
To begin integrating greater utilization into your workflow, prioritize appointments/initial assessments, surgeries and anesthetic procedures, and telehealth/teletriage. Develop detailed plans based on agreed-upon protocols and train everyone on implementation.

1 Thing to Never Forget

Optimal utilization is tied to job satisfaction, and it’s an essential piece for retaining credentialed veterinary technicians in the profession. Veterinary practices must make the commitment of time and training for all team members to implement optimal utilization. When practices make this commitment, change can start now!

Download the Guidelines at a Glance