Wellness Plans / BONDED CLIENT


45


The “Wellness Plan”


To meet customer needs today, initiate simple wellness plans for mutual gain.


by M. Carolyn Miller


pieces that are intellectually digestible, financially affordable and easily acces- sible. The veterinary industry is not immune to that trend. In fact, the Bayer Study supported it.


W


In that study, customers spoke loud and clear about what they wanted from prac- tices in bite-sized pieces: wellness plans.


What is a wellness plan? A wellness plan weaves preventive


and necessary services together and categorizes them by levels, with related fees. Underlying wellness plans is the bundling of services, something many practices do already on a small scale. For instance, practices often combine a tooth extraction (an emergency) with a dental cleaning (preventive care), or healing laser therapy with surgery. All wellness plans include a one-time


membership fee and monthly payments, automatically deducted from customers’ checking accounts. Monthly fees vary depending on the plan level. Some plans offer basic service for as low as $18 per month and more premier services for $39 per month, in part because most pet insurance won’t pay out more than $39– $45 per month.


All plans also offer unlimited monthly


visits. And although this may sound scary, according to Karl Salzsieder, DVM,


Trends magazine, April 2012 A wellness plan weaves preventive and


necessary services together and categorizes them by levels, with related fees.


JD, that’s a good thing. Dr. Salzsieder is the practice owner of Yelm Veterinary Hospital in Yelm, Wash., a large animal hospital that has been offering wellness plans for 25 years, and sees the value of them, including the visits. “Unlimited visits are a wonderful opportunity to break down the barrier that exists between customers and office visits,” says Dr. Salzsieder. Customers take advantage of that feature, too, visit- ing 2–5 times more often a month. You needn’t worry that your practice will be flooded with plan enrollees. In


e live in a world that is increas- ingly chunking everything— products, services, informa- tion, education—into bite-sized


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