Best practices for communicating with pet owners about pet diabetes

A new pet diabetes diagnosis easily sends people reeling. There’s so much to learn so quickly. Veterinary teams can reassure worried clients with clear information, hands-on coaching that builds bravery for the pet-care tasks ahead, a sense of partnership, and compassion and patience.

When you establish the veterinary practice as the primary source for pet diabetes information and supplies from the start, you save people angst, time, and exposure to misinformation. Even experienced pet owners will struggle without your help. By meeting clients’ needs right away, veterinary teams can prevent online retailers, Dr. Google, and others from intruding upon or eroding veterinary business by siphoning medical supply sales or by giving consumers inaccurate information or potentially dangerous advice on case management.

Veterinarians diagnosed Tabitha Haggerty’s cat Mickeyboo with diabetes a couple of months after starting IBD treatment in late 2020. Getting insulin and syringes in Atlanta turned into a stressful odyssey for her. With the clock ticking for using a glucose monitor to check Mickeyboo’s blood sugar and adjust insulin doses, Haggerty needed to get up to speed quickly.

A couple of things caught her off guard, even though Haggerty herself has worked as a veterinary assistant.

• Cost of insulin, both through the practice and at U.S.- based pharmacies
• Needles denied without a prescription from several local pharmacies

Haggerty acknowledges it would have been beneficial if she received detailed information listing needed supplies, where to buy them locally (or online), and ballpark cost estimates. She learned how to rig a DIY sharps container from an empty laundry detergent bottle — a tip from an online pet diabetes group. She also convinced a local pharmacy to sell a single insulin pen, which would normally come in a multipack, because that’s all she could afford at the time.

Communicating about pet diabetes cases

Haggerty isn’t alone in her struggles in the early days of a pet diabetes diagnosis. Assume every client in this situation needs your expert guidance and support. Best practices for handling pet diabetes cases include leveraging technologies that support effective case management and client communication. Robust, highly customizable client communication tools help you quickly mobilize what’s needed for new pet diabetes cases:

• Support with reliable access to medical supplies at reputable cost savings
• Delivery of the right messaging at the right time
• Supportive and educational client communication and engagement
• Accurate compliance tracking so you know when clients follow recommendations and if not, why not — such as if they’re struggling with dietary transitions

Take time to develop client education handouts as well as digital messaging for various stages of a pet diabetes case. Relevant topics include:

• Necessary supplies lists, costs, and sources
• Insulin storage details and cautions such as how to know a vial has gone bad
• Feeding and exercise instructions, including how weight loss/gain affects dosing
• Tips on keeping a detailed journal (weight, food and water consumption, behaviors)
• Insulin shot instructions, including common mistakes to avoid
• Blood sugar testing timing and instructions, if recommended
• Symptoms of concern
• Trustworthy support groups

What people need to know shifts over time, so initially focus only on the medical supplies and veterinary recommendations needed to get the pet’s treatment dialed in.

Provide client education about what constitutes an emergency in a pet diabetes case and where to seek help after hours. In addition to food, syringes, and insulin, Tessa Gonzales says her veterinary team in Duncanville, Texas, provided “a brochure for the nearest emergency vet near me and some paperwork on what to look for if he were to get too high or too low,” after her bearded collie/red heeler Marty’s pet diabetes diagnosis in February 2021, at the age of 11.

When things settle down, you can then send information about maintaining a consistent supply of pet diabetes food, insulin, and needles, as well as the timing of forward-booked recheck appointments and how much advance notice you need to approve refills.

Template a few supportive messages that you can quickly customize and send after face-to-face appointments, calls, or other contacts with clients. A well-timed “keep up the good work” note or one that expresses gratitude for clients sharing regular updates means a lot to people handling new pet health tasks and likely worrying more than they say.

Use automatic reorder reminder messages for key supplies to prevent panicked calls and potentially unreasonable demands, especially considering the increase in shipping delays.

Ordering pet diabetes supplies

People dealing with pet diabetes cases need reliable access to medical supplies too, especially insulin.

Some people, like Gonzales, appreciate technology that makes purchasing from their veterinary practice easy, such as prescription home delivery services.

“They [my veterinarian] told me they didn’t care where I purchased Marty’s food, syringes, or insulin,” Gonzales says. “I did try purchasing it through an online pharmacy. However, it’s faster and cheaper to pick up from them. They make it super easy. I can request what he needs through the app, and it’s usually ready within 30 minutes.”

The benefits of home delivery or other easy-ordering options through your practice include:

• Promoting your rightful expertise and professional services, which remain the heart of the veterinary business and address efforts to grab veterinary market share
• Pharmacy income, which helps even out seasonal revenue swings
• Additional client contact, which boosts engagement and retention
• Better case monitoring, which improves case management and outcomes
• Strong client service, which lowers everyone’s stress
• Comprehensive services, which increase your esteem

Veterinary ordering systems that match prices or offer discounts for autoship options also help clients save money and stress. Such systems also protect people from the risks of acquiring insulin from other countries, where quality control measures differ and counterfeit products may run more rampant.

Particularly with insulin supply issues over the past couple of years, ensure clients understand concerns about counterfeit products, going without, shorting doses, and switching brands without your oversight.

Prevention innovations in pet diabetes

Weight monitoring and management is the new technology frontier for preventing pet diabetes as well as other weight related conditions.

Healthy Pet Connect offers innovative ways to share pet data with veterinary teams. Co-founded by Dr. Ken Lambrecht, DVM, in Madison, Wisconsin, the company offers tele-monitoring equipment and a free open-source app, which track how much pets eat and how their weights change. He and his team continue testing pet tech, including activity trackers and feeders that help in homes with multiple pets eating different diets.

“For now, we boiled it down to a food scale and a baby scale,” Lambrecht explains. “They’re Bluetooth connected right into our app, so literally we can get huge compliance. They can also put in notes like, ‘Oh, my cat’s not feeling well today’ or, ‘vomited three times last night,’ and those notes will show up on the veterinary dashboard,” which is also free.

An initial trial looking at technology-enhanced weight loss in cats found a higher weekly weight-loss rate (as a percentage of starting body weight) in the technology group (0.694 percent) than the traditional group (0.175 percent).¹

The authors concluded that “This introductory investigation suggests that a technology-enhanced weight-loss program would be accepted by cat owners and may deliver advantageous outcomes in multiple-cat households.”

Lambrecht says, “We must know the weight of the cat at home, and it has to be an accurate scale. The one we’ve chosen is a baby scale that’s accurate down to 10 grams, and in the app, there’ll be all kinds of things to help pet parents do a better job at home... The relationship with the veterinarian stays completely unchanged. All we do is provide validated information.”

Being there for clients

New cases of diabetes in dogs and cats require high levels of guidance from veterinary teams. Though people need to handle injections and testing at home for the long haul, let clients know they can always rely on you for help.

The need for high-contact collaboration and communication typically drops when a case stabilizes. However, the need ramps up again if pets develop concurrent diagnoses such as kidney disease. In those situations, clients often require direct contact with a practitioner because it feels like another big blow.

When Mickeyboo also developed kidney disease, Haggerty struggled to get the information and connections she needed, which she says felt “distressing.” He wouldn’t eat the prescribed diets and did not tolerate getting subcutaneous fluids. Mickeyboo died in September 2021, and Haggerty wonders if he would have had a different outcome if she had better access to help.

Remember, time spent creating educational content and communications about pet diabetes frees you and your team up to deliver one-on-one guidance and compassion when clients need it most.

Reference

1. Hadar, B, et al. A technology-enhanced weight-loss program in multiple-cat households: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. 21 October 2021. Accessed 12 January 2021. Available online at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ full/10.1177/1098612X211044412.