Is it a preventative care plan for your patients? Is it a reliable, easy, affordable option for your clients? A revenue generation center for your practice?
A comprehensive wellness offering should contain all three – without discounting your current services. With a deeper look at wellness plans, you can increase the health of your practice as well has the health of your patients.
The most commonly used wellness plan in the industry is the “puppy plan.” For puppy patients, most practices include basic vaccinations plus a few wellness screen visits. Facilitating plans by including just the basics isn’t necessarily wrong, but it could limit your practice’s revenue growth as well as the quality care you could be providing over an extended period of time.
Your practice management software can help you set up and implement a variety of wellness plans to benefit your patients, your clients, and your practice. Here are some key reasons you should be thinking about integrating wellness plans from your software into your workflow.
Wellness plans encourage better care
First let’s take a look at what wellness plans should accomplish. They should encourage regular visits to you, the veterinarian. Banfield Pet Hospital found that pet owners that participate in wellness plans tend to visit twice as often as non-plan users. (Source: Veterinary Practice News, Wellness Plans Increase Monthly Visits) With appropriately planned care over the lifetime of the patient, you will be able to provide services that lead to healthier pets with a better quality of life.
When you see patients on a regular basis, serious illnesses and conditions can be caught and treated earlier. These plans also attract clients and their pets all year long, even during your slowest months, which amounts to better care, increased customer loyalty, and more revenue.
Wellness plans create more revenue
Next let’s take a look at why wellness plans will help your practice from a revenue perspective. Most clients love their pets, but not all clients love the expenses that pets can entail. There are few worse situations than clients who suffer from “sticker shock” at checkout. Clients never want to feel as though they can’t care for their pets due to the expense.
Wellness plans essentially make pet health care affordable by turning the expected annual cost of care into a monthly payment plan. For example, offering a plan for $30 per month for one year is more palatable then a lump sum due of $300. Positioning this as an affordable option for clients can keep the necessary care going without the dreaded conversation of cost. You provide regular, consistent care for your patients while driving consistent revenue for your practice.
When purchasing wellness plans, your clients have essentially budgeted and paid for their pets’ wellness program in advance. With the cost of the visit and procedures already taken care of, clients are more likely to pick up additional products when they visit the clinic, such as pet food and accessories.
When wellness plan clients come in, you can even promote specials specifically for them, such as a certain percentage off of retail products. This provides clients with extra incentive to purchase additional items, as well as promote the wellness offering to those who haven’t taken advantage of it yet.
Wellness plans can differentiate your practice
Another way wellness plans will benefit your practice is by differentiating your practice from others in the area. Wellness plans show that you are focused on the long-term care of your patients and clients as well as making that care very affordable. You can use that as a positioning tool to market your practice and grow your client base.
A Colloquy Loyalty Census found that members of a loyalty wellness program are 75% more likely to refer other members to that service, which means you could see a quick uptick in your consistent revenue stream by providing affordable care plans. These plans will allow you to provide excellent long-term care for both existing and new patients alike.
Wellness plans are easy to implement with practice management software
Now let’s focus on how you can use your practice management software to create and implement wellness plans as part of your regular workflow. Wellness plans allow you to bundle different services together to create wellness “packages” at set prices for the different types of patients you serve. Once set up, your software helps you manage these plans by collecting regular payments and managing appointments throughout the year.
To make collecting payments even easier, you can tie your plans to reoccurring credit card payments, so clients are charged automatically each month. This accomplishes a couple of things. First, it lessens your accounts receivable and gets your practice paid more quickly. It also creates a steady income flow for the practice. Having credit cards on file provides an automatic payment that clients no longer have to worry about. Regular payments happen automatically.
By implementing wellness plans, you create a win-win-win for your patients, your clients, and your practice. Patients get the care they need and clients have a better experience because pet health care becomes easy and affordable. Your practice benefits from a steady revenue stream and differentiation among competitors.