OUT OF EVERY $1 MILLION IN potential wellness revenue, you and your colleagues are collecting only $160,000. That's 16 percent,
according to data from Veterinary Metrics, an Atlanta-based consulting company, which calls this number the gap analysis.
It's another finding to add to the mound of data that points to missing wellness care for pets.
The company looks at core wellness services and products, including the exam, heartworm testing and preventives, intestinal
parasite testing, flea and tick preventives, wellness diagnostics for adults and seniors, dental prophys, and nutrition. Then
it looks at the annual fees and multiplies them by the number of dogs and cats to quantify the revenue potential. In 2005,
the company tracked 250 practices.
If you weren't alarmed by this 16 percent, consider this fact: The 2005 number is down. In 2003, when the company gathered
data from 60 practices nationwide, it found a gap analysis of 17 percent.
And those numbers are tallied only for clients that generated an invoice in the last 12 months. So we can't attribute the
shortfall to inactive clients who should be purged from the list. Pinpointing the gaps
Figure 1
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If you look at the wellness exam, which could be considered the centerpiece of a wellness program, Veterinary Metrics data
shows that less than half of pets are receiving one—42 percent of dogs and 36 percent of cats. And that number's down slightly
from 2003, when 45 percent of dogs and 37 percent of cats received wellness exams.
Of course, clients bring their pets in for more than just wellness exams, which helps explain why data from the 2005/2006
American Pet Products Manufacturers Association National Pet Owners Survey shows the average number of veterinary visits for
dogs in a 12-month period was 2.8 in 2004 and 2.3 for cats.
Complementary data from The Feline Study conducted by BNResearch on behalf of Banfield, the Pet Hospital, shows that 31 percent
of cats and 58 percent of dogs visit two or more times a year. (See Figure 1 for more.) The national study of pet owners,
which was released at Banfield's 2005 Pet Care Industry Summit, reports the average number of visits over a 12-month period
at 1.5 for cats and 2.5 for dogs.
Clients bring their pets in for vaccinations, and flea and tick control and prevention products, for example, says Steve Hoefer,
part of the National Pet Wellness Month (NPWM) team. Given that clients are already visiting their veterinarians more than
once a year, Hoefer points out that practitioners have more than one opportunity to educate them about the importance of all
wellness care. And a message about twice-yearly exams is timely, he says. "Clients are already bringing their pets in twice
or more a year so it certainly makes sense for a practice to offer twice-a-year exams and educate their clients about the
health benefits of such exams."
The potential for biannual exams is hardly tapped. The NPWM reports 14,000 veterinary clinics now participate in its campaign,
up from 10,000 since its launch in October 2004. Yet the 2005 Well-Managed Practice Study, published by Wutchiett Tumblin
and Associates and Veterinary Economics, shows that only 7 percent of Well-Managed Practices—a group identified for its top-notch business practices—report that
more than 50 percent of their patients come in for six-month exams.
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