Dental research has long suggested that a pet’s oral health is essential to overall health and quality of life. Without preventive dental care, pets can experience tooth and bone loss, gum inflammation, infection and pain, which may go unnoticed because they cannot tell us when something is wrong. There is no doubt about the connection between poor oral hygiene and serious medical complications, but the benefits from dental wellness programs often fly under the radar.

A wellness program can eliminate the barrier, encouraging clients to see regular dental exams as part of overall wellness. It can also attract clients and their pets year-round, even during your slowest months. That amounts to better care and more revenue.

Clients feel they receive more value for their money and enjoy the convenience of pre-set wellness checkups and services, including a regular dental exam. Veterinarians enjoy more regular visits and the ability to keep better tabs on patient health. And patients receive better care because of all the basic health services included in the plan, some of which clients may not otherwise purchase. It’s a win-win-win.

The basic idea of a wellness plan is to create a “package” of basic wellness treatments offered at a set price to encourage regular health checkups. Clients pay for the package up front or at regular intervals throughout the year and then come in at designated times to receive all services.

Most major software programs allow practices to create wellness plans. Typically it involves creating a treatment that represents the wellness plan and entering it into the patient’s medical history. Here is how it works in AVImark:

Step 1: Create a treatment representing the wellness plan, and assign it a specific charge. (This is what you’ll use to create the invoice.)

Step 2: Attach all the services you’d like to include in the treatment. Most practices include the basic wellness services that are recommended each year, such as blood work, stool samples, and flea and tick preventatives. Include a dental exam as part of the package, or, create a “Wellness Plus” program that includes an annual dental checkup and cleaning.

Step 3: Sell the wellness plan and invoice the client. When given to a patient, the wellness plan treatment you created will cause all services included in the plan to go into the medical history as a $0 charge. You have a record of services performed in the medical history, but the client is only charged for the price of the wellness package.

Step 4: Schedule the appropriate follow-up visits. There are a number of ways to get this done. If your front desk staff is already in the habit of scheduling the next visit at check-out, keep that up. Or, you can add a follow-up to the Wellness Plan, which will remind the front desk staff to call the client to schedule the next appointment. AVImark also has a “Schedule Next Appointment” prompt, which will ask after each visit if the next appointment should be scheduled.

One other benefit of wellness plans: Clients may be more likely to purchase other things throughout the year at their wellness visits, since they have already paid for their wellness plan. They can justify picking up things such as food, accessories, and preventatives because they don’t have to pay additional fees for their wellness visits, which are covered under the plan that they paid for earlier in the year. Consider this a great opportunity to suggest dental products such as toothbrushes/toothpaste or teeth-cleansing treats or toys. Taking preventive steps over a pet’s lifetime may reduce the impact of bad oral or physical health and the costs associated with managing such cases. Dental wellness is an important aspect of patient care. We hope you find that wellness plans are a great way to increase client compliance – particularly when it comes to dental health, improve the overall health of your patients, and boost customer loyalty.

About the Author
Messina Sinn is marketing manager for AVImark. She can be reached at [email protected].