PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
Article reprinted with permission of DVM360 - Sept, 15 2017
DVM360 MAGAZINE is a copyrighted publication of Advanstar.
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Why 'Use it or Lose it' Works in Veterinary
Wellness Plans
By Brendan Howard, Business Channel Director, VETTED
When veterinary clients pay an annual fee—or monthly
installments—for wellness services over the course of
a year, will they be mad if they don't use them? Not
if you remind them. (You ARE sending out regular re-
minders for everything, right?) Plans cover cats, dogs and horses.
• We quote Veterinary Credit Plans' Jessica Goodman
Lee here in the article, and the company helps veteri-
nary practices implement, market and manage those
pesky credit card payments for annual wellness plans.
Clients who pay for annual veterinary wellness plans
should be watching the clock. If they don't, don't worry.
Way before the genius veterinarians and businesspeo-
ple swept in to build companies to manage wellness
plans for veterinary practices, one particular practice
owner, evaluator and consultant, Karl Salzsieder, DVM,
JD, CVA, saw the opportunity in monthly-payment
wellness plans and just did it himself. (Veterinary Eco-
nomics wrote about his efforts numerous times over
the years. If you're thinking about getting into wellness
plans, you might be inspired by dvm360.com/sample-
plan or dvm360.com/wellnessplans.) The Takeaway?
You're smart, and you can go it alone on wellness
plans with a strong action plan, a great practice man-
ager to help, and a team-wide effort. But if you want
backup, look around the next Fetch conference exhib-
it hall, or check out the offerings like those above on
Products360.
And Dr. Salzsieder has fielded every question under
the sun about wellness plans. Tops among them:
1. Should I include free visits for plan members (a la
Banfield, where you don't pay for the visit, you pay
for the product or service at the visit, as needed)?
2. How do I make sure clients come in to use the ser-
vices they've paid for by the end of the year?
Too Hard. Don't Wanna.
When some readers used to see Dr. Karl Salzsieder's
wellness plans, they would break out in hives. Who's
going to set this up? How do we charge for it? Who's
going to send out reminders? Who's going to admin-
ister this? Today, you are free to rock your own plan ...
or you can get help. Here are a handful of companies
poised to help make implementing annual wellness
plans doable:
• DVM Network offers, not a wellness plan, but the
loyalty discount card Pet Assure. It's like Diner's Club,
only for veterinary practices. Some practitioners who
use it swear by it.
• The big PIMS and diagnostic dog IDEXX has the well-
ness plan Petly Plans.
• Premier Pet Care Plan promises a real hands-on,
coaching take on implementing a wellness plan at
your veterinary practice.
• Got a mixed-animal practice? Prevent Plans' Well Pet
vet360
Issue 06 | DECEMBER 2017 | 6
Dr. Salzsieder will argue any day that for most clients
and most pets, you will come out way ahead, and that
patient care will come out way ahead, when clients
aren't staying away from your hospital ("Let's just wait
and see...") because they're afraid of an automatic
charge for a visit. Wellness-plan clients come in an av-
erage of 5 times a year; clients not on the plan visit an
average of 1.1 times.
And that second question, about unused services? Dr.
Salzsieder has a solution for that too: Tell them. And
tell them again.
"Our solution is to mail them a letter about 90 days
before the end of the term of the one-year agree-
ment and include in that letter notice of the items that
still need to be checked before the plan expires," Dr.
Salzsieder says. That gets some busy clients over the
hump and into the exam room.
"We also add them to our compliance calls, so they're
called or receive a phone message to remind them
to come in for the unused items," he says. That helps
some clients.
One company managing wellness plans for independ-
ent veterinary practices is Veterinary Credit Plans, and
their process mirrors Dr. Salzsieder's—except with an
email bent. Director of Veterinary Solutions Jessica
Goodman Lee, CVPM, says their system sends email
reminders 90 days out and 60 days from the end of
the plan's automatic renewal date.