While concerns about the costs of veterinary care are hitting the headlines, we know that independent practices want to do everything that they can to keep veterinary care affordable for their clients.
One method of budgeting that is rising in popularity is the pet health plan. Designed to spread the cost of everyday pet care across the year, pet health plans are also an excellent way to ensure that pets receive appropriate care and treatment.
It can also prove to be beneficial to the running of your business. By offering a long term and cost effective offering to your clients, you will be rewarding a consistent and loyal customer base.
But where do you start with creating a pet health plan? It will be different for every practice, but there are four key elements to consider:
Preventative care
Everyone knows the old adage ‘prevention is better than cure’, and it is especially true in the veterinary profession. By creating a pet health plan, you can make it easy and affordable for your clients to keep their pets healthy by identifying the warning signs of medical conditions early.
Speak to your team and ask which common tests and procedures they find most helpful in assessing an animal’s health. If you are able to easily facilitate it in your practice, and it is affordable to do so, this may be a procedure worth adding to your pet health plan.
Some examples of things that might be worth including in your pet health plan are an animal’s essential vaccinations, microchipping, flea and worm prevention and flystrike prevention.
Long-term benefits
A good pet health plan will not only suit the immediate needs of a pet, but also ensure that they stay healthy throughout their lifetime. Be sure to reward your clients’ loyalty by creating a pet health plan that helps them throughout their pet’s lifetime.
This can be achieved through a comprehensive pet health plan, proactive engagement with clients and regular reminders of its benefits.
A pet health plan with long term benefits might include dental check-ups, ageing clinics or discounts for pet diets.
Make it budget-friendly
Affordability is important for many clients, and is often the driving factor for opting into a pet health plan. Although it may be tempting to fill your plan with everything a pet might need for a full health check, sometimes this just isn’t affordable.
When totalling up the costs of your pet health plan, consider how high the price may be reaching. If it is seeming too high, it may be worth considering your options: How low could you make your price to make it accessible to your clients? Are there any tests or procedures which could be removed from the plan? Could a levelled pet health plan system be the answer?
It is also a good idea to offer different payment options, so that your client can choose to pay in a way that suits them best. This could be either a monthly or annual bill – they may also want to choose their recurring date.
Boost your brand identity
A good pet health plan is something to be proud of, so it is worth making it a big part of your brand identity. This could involve making your own posters and leaflets to be displayed in practice and distributed to the local community. It should also be prominent and easily findable on your practice website, with all of the details included.
As well as promoting the value of your pet health plan in these materials, it is important that it is clear exactly what a pet health plan is. You should make sure that any marketing materials explain what is included in the plan, and that having a pet health plan is not a substitute for an insurance policy.
These details also need to be fully communicated with any reception or veterinary team members who might be involved in offering the plan.
