Why pet health plans are more important than ever right now
Anyone who knows me or follows our work at Practice Made Purrfect knows I am big on health plans. And not just health plans – unlimited consults.
I think they’re the most important thing we can offer our clients for a number of reasons, as you can see in our grand how-to guide on our website, where I outline why they’re best for pets, best for clients – and best for your practice.
It’s fair to say that we’ve got experience in the matter, too – we’ve launched over 20 pet health plans for practices, each one meaningfully different, and in total the plans we currently oversee are worth a whopping £9.5m per year.
Now, we all know our landscape is changing at the moment. Covid was our biggest challenge… until it wasn’t, and there are plenty of new issues wrestling for the title.
But whatever is being thrown at us, I’m confident a strong health plan can be a robust part of our response.
Read on to find out why – and remember, there’s nobody more experienced at helping practices with their health plans than me and my team, so if you want advice, we’d love to help.
New clients are tough to come by – so bonding your best clients is even more important
During Covid we had pets coming out of our ears, but all the evidence shows that new clients are increasingly difficult to come by.
We’re seeing this anecdotally, with practice owners telling me that they feel quiet for the first time in years, and that the number of new pets they’re meeting is lower than it has been.
And we’re seeing this in the data, too, with the average number of new clients dropping annually over the last three years and hitting its lowest point in 2025, across over a hundred practices we’ve got access to.
So what does this have to do with health plans? Well, if it’s harder to attract new people to your practice, the priority has to be taking the best care possible of the people you do have.
And there’s no better way of bonding a client to you than prescribing them your health plan.
You’re giving them access to the best service you can offer at your best price – why would they want to look elsewhere?
Transparency and budgeting
A key aspect of our health plans has always been how they allow clients to break down the cost of veterinary care into affordable monthly payments.
The cost of living isn’t getting any easier, so the value of this isn’t getting any less attractive.
But in the context of the CMA and the renewed importance on transparency as a buzzword in our industry, we can’t be any more transparent than championing our health plan.
The price is set, the benefits are clear and the savings are real.
Consumers expect the best service – “there’s nothing to pay today” is a wow moment
A post I clocked on LinkedIn recently reminded me of something I’ve believed in since I first heard Dr Marty Becker back in 2014 – in his words, "clients don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care."
It may be that clients are increasingly taking the clinical work we perform for their pet for granted and forming their opinions on our quality from their experience of the service we provide.
This is a symptom of changes in wider society that we can’t really control – but we are in control of how we interpret the information for our practice.
And there aren’t many bigger wow moments than when a client sees a vet, has a fantastic experience, then goes to reception and is told “you have nothing to pay today”.
We need to make every client feel like their pet is a VIP, and our health plan is the most efficient way to achieve this.
The corporates are adopting free consults
I don’t want to go into too much detail on this as my colleague Andy covered it in a blog earlier in the year – but it is an important point.
For many years my advice to independent practices was that an unlimited consult health plan was a great way to differentiate from corporate competitors.
But now the tables are turning.
If a corporate competitor has an unlimited consult health plan and you don’t – you’re the one playing catch up.
The benefit of being independent is that we’re fast, nimble and have the freedom to choose our own path. If clients are increasingly seeing health plans as the norm – and as a key factor in how they decide who to trust with their pet’s care – then now is the time to act.
Loss of income from products
Again this is something I’ve touched on in a previous blog, but it’s an important point.
I don’t get involved with clinical debates, leaving it to the experts and focusing on what I’m best at. And hopefully all of this is hypothetical and the CMA’s final findings differ greatly from the last clusterfuck we were served.
But if income from products are trending towards becoming less reliable, it makes sense that we need to move income towards services - the human expertise that the robots can never undercut us on.
Your health plan is a key weapon in making this move. I work with established, extremely profitable practices who have 30%+ of their income coming from their health plan, and practices who pull in millions of pounds of annual subscription revenue.
That’s a significant safety net if you’re concerned about drug sales.
If you’re affected by any of the issues above, are planning to update your health plan, or simply fancy a chat with someone who spends several hours a day thinking about how to make subscription services even better for practices and their clients, I’m here to help.
Vet practice marketing
To us it's personal
If you’re eager to improve your practice’s marketing but you’re unsure where to start, I’m taking on new clients for the next quarter! Book an initial discovery below!
