Pet Health Insurance in first opinion practice

Re: Pet Health Insurance in first opinion practice

Laurence Webb — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:10:09 GMT

Yes I agree it's very low. You could deduct treatments under £80 etc but you'd need to differentiate between animals that have several visits under £80 for the same thing and those that are fixed with a single visit costing less.

A referral centre would have a much higher percentage coming from insurance because lack of insurance probably filters out people who can't afford referral but also because they probably don't make a significant proportion of their income from vaccinations, wormers and cat castrates.

I'm not suggesting your figures are worthless - they're very interesting but should you find that 30% of your non-routine turnover is covered by insurance held by 17% of clients that's much more encouraging than 5% of it!

Re: Pet Health Insurance in first opinion practice

Tim Mainland — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 10:05:49 GMT

[quote user="Laurence Webb"]

Can you deduct the routine work (vaccinations, neutering, dentistry) and ancillary sales (food etc) to see how much work would have been exempt from insurance anyway? That would give a clearer picture of how much insurance contributes to turnover of illness/accident.

[/quote]

We could do allsorts of stats. Should one remove all treatments of total value sub £80 because they wouldn't be above excess level anyway??? How far does one go. Seems a reasonable and interesting stat to find out the percentage of total t/o which comes from insurance. And for us it's very low. Now try asking for the same stat from a referral centre!

Re: Pet Health Insurance in first opinion practice

Laurence Webb — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 09:30:11 GMT

Re: Pet Health Insurance in first opinion practice

Gerry Henry — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 09:16:49 GMT

'Oesophageal stricture', Paddy, you've really got to brush up on your tubing technique

Re: Pet Health Insurance in first opinion practice

PATRICK MARSHALL — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:41:05 GMT

Interesting figures - there has to be a margin in it for the PHI companies - the question is how much? Judging by the increasing number of queries we are getting about perfectly legitimate insurance claims at the moment ("full case history by fax please" etc.) those (fat?) margins are being squeezed somewhat in the current economic climate.

I have also noticed a new development today when an insurance company called to request information about a claim for a case that had been referred. The nurse who took the call was immediately told that the call was being recorded by the PHI company. She sensibly told the caller that she would do her best but that as it was a complicated case she couldn't be certain that her answers would be 100% correct. Fortunately I happened to walk into the office at that moment and she passed the call to me with a huge sigh of relief. I was likewise informed that the call was being recorded and having ascertained the caller's call centre "log-in" reference and full name was happy to give her the details that she needed so urgently about the chronology of the case. Along the way I was also happy to spell "acute necrotising and suppurative hepatitis with secondary peritonitis" and "oesophageal stricture" which were apparently new to her. Net result is that all calls from insurance companies are now only dealt with by a vet and we will be asking this particular PHI company (Petplan) to put all of its requests for further information in writing in future.

Whether this is retribution for my querying (to insurance ombudsman level) their refusal to pay the full cost (50%) of NSAID's that a client's labrador needs for its arthritic left shoulder I have no idea. The 12 YO Labrador does have arthritis in both its shoulders I freely admit - but the right one has been excluded because the case history we supplied showed that she had been seen on one occasion when 10 months old for lameness in her right shoulder from which she recovered uneventfully. Does this mean that it only needs a 1/2 therapeutic dose for its left shoulder? Fortunately nowhere in its case history does it allude to the possibility of the dog ever having suffered from stifle or hip pain or they may only be prepared to pay for 25% or even 10% of the NSAID cost.

A significant number of our clients are not insured and seem to respond well to the idea that if they had put away an actual or theoretical £20 a month for the duration of the dog's life the average dog would have in excess of £2500 in its piggy bank to pay for veterinary fees if the need arises.