Simplify Preventive Care with Veterinary Wellness Plans

As veterinary care costs rise, clients seek to save money without sacrificing their furry pal’s well-being. Veterinary wellness plans offer an ideal solution to this dilemma with benefits for clients, pets, and the practice’s bottom line. Plans typically bundle preventive care services as annual discounted packages that can be paid monthly.

Although wellness plans seem like a win-win-win for everyone, they can also become an administrative burden for leadership or make staff members feel like salespeople. However, the right tools and mindset can help teams avoid pitfalls. Here, we look at the benefits and downsides of wellness plans and how they can work for your practice.

Veterinary wellness plan benefits

Wellness service bundles can benefit practices, clients, and pets. They impact the veterinary team by:

-       Increasing loyalty — Wellness plans incentivize clients to keep coming back to the practice, where they form stronger bonds with their veterinary team.

-       Stabilizing revenue — Predictable income from monthly wellness plan payments contributes to steady revenue and growth.

-       Improving compliance — Wellness plans remove cost as a barrier to care and lead to more consistently booked preventive care appointments.

For clients, the benefits of wellness plans include:

-       Cost savings — Dividing a year of care costs into 12 monthly payments makes services more affordable.

-       Comprehensive care — Clients don’t always know which services their pet needs to stay healthy. Wellness plans provide a care blueprint that ensures nothing falls through the cracks.

-       Peace of mind — Wellness plans eliminate the stress of planning and paying for routine care, providing clients with peace of mind that their pet is covered from every angle.

Finally, here’s how pets benefit from wellness plans:

-       Early detection — Frequent visits provide more opportunities for early disease detection and intervention.

-       Timely care — Wellness plans focus on the pet’s needs rather than cost, so pet owners are less likely to delay or decline services.

-       Quality of life — Wellness plans encourage proactive veterinary care, which is critical for healthier, longer-living pets.

Getting started with veterinary wellness plans

Switching from traditional care to a wellness plan model affects everyone involved. A successful transition requires complete buy-in from team members to champion the program and convey its value to prospective purchasers. Leaders must carefully research third-party plan administrators and determine how the new processes will impact efficiency and revenue while they ramp up plan usage.

Once a provider is chosen, plans must be customized according to your hospital’s vision and values. Ask your medical staff what they would include in plan tiers for pets’ various life stages, and then discuss and solidify recommendations. Keep plans simple, and remember, they aren’t set in stone—you can continue to reevaluate the plan and make adjustments.

Help staff members unleash their inner salesperson with marketing and communications training, so they feel comfortable discussing and promoting wellness plans without seeming pushy or insincere. A good wellness plan sells itself when clients understand how this form of care helps them meet their furry pal’s needs.

The role of modern veterinary software in wellness plan management

Veterinary wellness plan management can be time-consuming and tedious without the proper tools. Cloud-based software can accommodate wellness plan add-ons and integrations, so you can handle transactions, adjustments, and cancellations without switching between windows. An in-house management platform also helps gain client trust, as well-trained team members can troubleshoot issues instead of sending them to an outside company’s complaint department.

Veterinary wellness plans provide a much-needed respite from cost concerns for clients and steady revenue for the practice. Plans enhance pets' overall health and well-being while strengthening the client-practice relationship. Implementing wellness plans with the support of specialized software can streamline operations and ensure this proactive healthcare model is successful.