Pets Best pet insurance company reviewed their claims over $500 to determine where pets were treated and found that:
Therefore, if your pet experiences an unexpected and serious injury or illness, you have almost a 50% chance of being seen at an emergency hospital or being referred to a specialist.
Emergency hospitals often deal with life-threatening problems that need intensive care or even emergency surgery – usually at hours when your primary care veterinarian’s hospital isn’t open.
Specialists have more advanced training and access to more advanced technology (e.g. CT scans or MRIs) to help them solve and treat more difficult cases.
For these reasons, the fees at specialty and emergency hospitals are usually higher than what you would pay at your primary care veterinarian’s hospital.
Specialty and emergency hospitals play an important role, along with your primary care veterinarian, in providing quality healthcare to your pet, and (when needed) can be the difference between the successful or unsuccessful treatment of your pet. My guest today is Jeannie Dardano, an administrative assistant and pet insurance liaison at Wheat Ridge Animal Hospital - a 24 hour emergency and specialty hospital. Interestingly, Wheat Ridge also has general practitioners in their practice.
Although they will treat pets insured with any company, they actively promote Trupanion pet insurance to pet owners who visit their practice. They use Trupanion's software (Trupanion Express) that integrates with their own practice software to rapidly file claims and receive reimbursement. I'd heard about Trupanion Express being used in primary care practices, but wanted to interview someone who uses it in an emergency and specialty practice setting.
We discuss:
- The initial reason the doctors and staff became interested in pet insurance.
- Why pet insurance and/or Care Credit comes in handy especially for emergency and specialty services.
- The process they used to determine which pet insurance company they would use when offering pet insurance as a benefit to their staff and recommend to their clients.
- How they introduce pet insurance to their clients.
- An explanation of how Trupanion Express works in their hospital
- How Trupanion Express compares with what she worked with in the human healthcare field
Check out these links relevant to this interview:
Wheat Ridge Animal Hospital website
Discussion with Darryl Rawlings, CEO at Trupanion, about the company and Trupanion Express
Interview with Dr. Heather Steyn and how Trupanion Express has impacted her practice
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