Kicking off the new year with pet insurance
Start the new year off right when it comes to discussing pet insurance with your clients
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Now that we have officially wrapped up the holiday season, families who received pets for Christmas will be making their way into clinics looking for care and guidance. With new patients entering clinics, are teams prepared or comfortable bringing pet insurance discussions to these new parents?
On the very first episode of The Vet Blast Podcast in 2024, host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, sat down with Ricky Walthers, DVM, chief medical officer at Pawlicy Advisor, to take a deep dive into trends and misconceptions surrounding pet insurance, plus how veterinary teams can educate clients on pet insurance to help them better understand the importance of having it.
Below is a partial transcript
Ricky Walthers, DVM: One of the things that we're seeing in veterinary medicine in general is increased stress and anxiety of owners due to finances, right? So people are coming in more are aware of the money that's in their pocket given the way that the world has been recently, and the veterinary prices are increasing, kind of with that inflation, and medical inflation is even higher than standard. And so because of those things that we're seeing where owners are coming and asking for these financial solutions. So as veterinary team members, right, like we ultimately want what's best for the pet and so helping owners financially prepare allows us to do our part and make sure that pet gets the care that they need in the future.
So I think having these conversations in puppy visits [and] annual wellness visits for young healthy pets are extremely important so the people here at multiple times. A couple of other reasons why I recommend that veterinarians and veterinary teams have something prepared to say about insurance is because when AVMA did their study on pet insurance, a couple of years ago, they found that 65% of pet owners who purchased insurance did so because the vet recommended it.1
Reference
Williams A, Coble KH, Williams B, et al. Consumer preferences for Pet Health Insurance. Published online 2016. doi:10.22004/AG.ECON.230144
