How to boost pet owner compliance year-round
By MWI Animal Health
Client compliance must remain a topic of conversation throughout the year. It may reach top of mind when flea, tick, and heartworm seasons get into gear — but parasiticides aren't the only treatment with which pet parents must comply. Routine checks and vaccines, prescription fills and refills, chronic disease management, and dental visits are all areas where clients might need gentle nudges.
Owner compliance with veterinarian-recommended treatments and services in the United States varies, with an 87 percent compliance rate for core vaccines1 but only a 50 percent compliance rate for dental visits2, a 34 percent compliance rate for senior screening, and a 21 percent compliance rate for therapeutic diets.1
Such numbers, of course, could use improvement. Regular dental care can prevent more serious health problems, early screening for age-related diseases can open up more treatment possibilities and potential successes, and veterinarian-prescribed diets may help avoid or delay medications for certain conditions. Compliance also maintains consistent treatment — including prescription refills for the treatment of long-term diseases, such as osteoarthritis and other chronic conditions.
Fortunately, you can leverage your communications tools to increase compliance rates and strengthen your connection and relationship with pet owners. Consider pre-visit, in-clinic, post-visit, and client-led as your mile markers and follow us on the road trip to stronger communication and compliance.
Stop 1:
Pre-visit messaging
Pet owners have many things on their minds. Sometimes, they miss appointments and don't administer medications because they simply forget. Communication technology can step in to help your practice help them remember. When pet owners get visit reminders in their preferred channels, they are more likely to see them, remember them, and take action. Within our PetPage app, your clients can choose their preferred communication methods — phone, email, or text. Connecting with them via the channel of their choice increases the chance they will show up.
Preferred channels
- 94 percent of pet owners will open an email from their veterinarian
- 52 percent of pet owners prefer getting appointment reminders by text 3
AllyDVM also segments your lists. This way, the right owner gets the right message at the right time. You don't need to send an email blast about the importance of booking a senior consult to the owner of a new kitten. This may come across as insulting to the pet owner and risk that they'll ignore your messages in the future — or worse, make them leave.
Personalizing messages for each pet's breed, lifestyle, age, and health condition goes a long way in growing owners' trust that you know them and have their pets' best interests at heart.
Turn onto Synergy Street
Another reason pet owners may refrain from compliance is the cost of treatment. Providing manufacturer-sponsored discounts to offset some of that cost is mutually beneficial — they are more likely to bring their pets in for vaccines and/or parasiticides, which is a win for pet health. Your practice wins because manufacturer partners pay for both the discount and the cost of the email marketing campaign. All you have to do is ensure the relevant products are on hand.
Such targeted and customized email campaigns are another way to grow compliance, increase practice connection, and educate pet owners that preventive care is easy. Choose from annual visit reminders, birthday messages, refills from your pharmacy, and more to help increase compliance and revenue in your clinic. The Synergy Partner Program systematically sends these emails to your clients on your practice's behalf and personalizes each email with your practice details, logo, and online pharmacy information should you choose to add it.
And it works! Participating practices have seen a 33 percent growth in doses of parasiticides dispensed, leading to a 20 percent increase in revenue.4
Sending the right communication to the right pet owner at the right time is important to getting your messages heard and understood. No dog owner wants a reminder for a flea medication formulated for cats. Consider the laser focus of Synergy's plug-and-play email campaigns.
Laser-focused campaigns from Synergy
- Win back: Market to pet owners who have not purchased flea, tick, and/or heartworm prevention in over 12 months.
- Compliance: Synergy's reminder campaign reminds pet owners to refill their prescriptions.
- New pet parents: Establish recommendations early for new patient care in your practice by automatically detecting new pet owners.
- Introduce your practice recommendations: Ensure all pet owners are aware of your practice's recommendations for preventive care.
Turn onto AllyDVM avenue
To address these issues, veterinary practices can leverage technology like AllyDVM. This comprehensive tool improves appointment scheduling and sends personalized reminders via email or text messages. By reaching out to clients through their preferred channels of communication, we can help ensure that they understand the importance of vaccinations and feel comfortable bringing their pets in for these appointments.
Another critical aspect of pet healthcare is ensuring that owners fill flea, tick, and heartworm prescriptions and administer them on schedule. Unfortunately, this is another area where compliance can often fall short. By using a communications platform like AllyDVM, practices can directly text specific clients whose pets are past due for their medication refills.
Regular dental visits are another crucial aspect of maintaining overall pet health. However, getting owners to schedule these checkups can sometimes prove challenging. Here again, technology like AllyDVM can help by sending reminders and scheduling appointments.
Stop 2:
In-clinic messaging
While your client is in the office, check your retention calendar to identify whether there are other pets in their home who are past due for appointments. Your staff can easily cross-reference with open time slots and book those additional appointments before the pet owner leaves. Capturing pets at home is an overlooked but simple way to increase appointments and, therefore, compliance and revenue.
Face-to-face conversations are a powerful communication tool for driving compliance. A pet owner may not see the benefit of ongoing treatments, especially for a chronic condition. They may see that their pet is improving outwardly, think the treatment must have done its job, and stop administering medications or bringing them in for follow-ups. Continual and consistent treatment is important to maintain appropriate levels of medication in the body. They mean well, but stopping without their veterinarian's consent may cause more harm than good. You need open, honest, and nonjudgmental conversations about the importance of following a treatment path.
Empathy plays a crucial role in addressing common reasons for noncompliance. Owners may lack trust, feel overwhelmed, or have concerns about administering medication. By showing empathy, repeating what clients say, and actively involving them in decision-making, veterinary professionals can build trust and increase compliance. Sending follow-up texts to clients to see how treatment is progressing and listening when they talk about any challenges they've run into can illuminate how to keep them compliant.
Stop 3:
Follow-up messaging and virtual care
Veterinary professionals often face challenges when pushing the importance of compliance and must resort to disjointed communication methods that don't allow pet owners to follow through on recommendations made in the clinic. Pet owners can use your practice's branded app to keep track of their pet's prescription history and request refills for both medications and prescription diets. The app's helpful to-do feature allows users to set reminders to give pets their meds at the right time. By making it easier for pet owners to manage their pets' medication schedules and dietary needs, we can significantly improve compliance rates.
85 percent of pet owners express interest in connecting with their veterinarian with a telehealth platform.6
What if you saw more pets in a day? A week? How might that grow revenue? More opportunities to see pets translate into more opportunities for revenue. Our virtual care solution is intuitive and cost-effective, leaving plenty of margins for your practice. Best of all, it can integrate with your AllyDVM retention calendar, helping you identify more pets who can benefit from a virtual appointment.
Turn onto Virtual Care Vista
With virtual care, you can grow your reputation as a client-friendly practice. Your clients sometimes endure a lot of stress when taking a pet to an appointment. They might have to miss work, sit in traffic, and worry they're running late. And some animals don't take well to car rides. What if pet owners could connect with you remotely? That might influence their decision to pick your practice over a competitor's and give them an increased ability to stay compliant with vets' recommendations.
Live video and audio features coupled with smart digital tools allow vets to track patients' well-being from a distance. This approach reduces the need for face-to-face consultations, encouraging earlier interventions and promoting better outcomes.
Chronic diseases require ongoing management which can pose a challenge for both vets and pet owners. The good news is that virtual care — when used alongside remote patient monitoring technology — can greatly enhance the ability to manage chronic diseases effectively.
Virtual care is often especially beneficial for senior pets. Remote assessments can lift some of the burden off the pet owner and make it easier for them to adhere to your recommendations.
You've made it to the end of our compliance road trip. Hopefully you enjoyed seeing the sights and felt that the trip was entertaining and educational. As a souvenir, remember leveraging communications programs to pull through key compliance messaging is an important step toward healthier pets and more engaged owners.