COVID-19 is making everyone’s pennies count even more. The US jobs report for April brings news that the US has a loss of 20.6 million jobs since mid-March, resulting in an unemployment rate of 14.7%, a level not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Now more than ever, most pet owners have less in their pockets to pay for veterinary care. Here are other tips for providing affordable care to your clients: 

Do this:

Learning how to practice “incremental care” is probably the most impactful way to work within a client’s financial constraints. It is important to recognize the differences between gold-standard care, “the standard of care,” and incremental care. Incremental care speaks to a spectrum of care options to fit within unique constraints. It serves as an important alterative to the animal not being able to receive any care at all. This style of doctoring is not new and requires using more judgment, more intuition, or empirical treatments to reduce associated diagnostic and treatment costs when the best recommendations are unobtainable. The owner must understand and consent to the fact that the treatment plan is limited; therefore, one must work closely with the owner to prioritize recommendations, communicate risks, and convey alternative plans if monitoring or limited treatment is unsuccessful. It is a tiered approach to patient management.

Another important way to help your clients financially is to be familiar with how to leverage financial aid organizations in your community. There are many funds and non-profits that exist to help with certain types of veterinary costs and services. Look for lists of these organizations on the United States  Humane Society’s and the Best Friends Animal Society’s websites. (See the bibliography for details.) Additional help can be leveraged from private fundraising and crowd-sourcing—these can be very effective and are worth mentioning to clients struggling with a bill.

Not this:

Unfortunately, there is a harmful narrative that is not uncommon in veterinary hospitals: if a client cannot afford veterinary care, then they should not own a pet. Avoid falling into this thinking trap. Someone who cannot currently afford veterinary care may have been in a completely different financial situation when they adopted their pet, and regardless of that, clients do not need to be wealthy to love their pet or to care deeply about the animal’s well-being. Therefore, it’s important to disrupt this narrative and to respond to cost-constrained clients with both sensitivity and openness. 

The client and the veterinarian ultimately want the same thing—to help the pet. Appreciating this common ground can help us navigate all the ambiguity of each individual veterinary-client-patient relationship. Finding medical solutions within the owner’s means may require some creativity, but it’s part of our commitment as veterinarians to do the best we can for each animal and each owner.