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Welfare Consultations to Improve Pet Wellbeing and Generate Revenue

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Kelly Arthur

By Kelly Arthur

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Improving animal welfare is the basis of veterinary medicine. However, improving animal welfare can oftentimes be costly. A new consultation structure, PetWise MOTs, created by the UK’s leading veterinary charity, PDSA, is a step to overcoming these obstacles. PetWise MOTs can be used to improve pet welfare and generate additional revenue for practices. 

 

A review of the UK’s Animal Welfare Act in 2010 placed additional emphasis on veterinary involvement in promoting better pet welfare. The PetWise MOTs model was created because while clients value their pet’s welfare, they are often unsure how to improve it. The video below explains the development of the PetWise MOT concept. 

 

 

The five areas that are focused on in these appointments are good health, the ability of an animal to express normal behavior, availability of companionship, providing a safe environment, and feeding a suitable diet. During a PetWise MOT appointment, veterinarians are able to ask more in-depth questions of their clients that may not be able to be discussed during a normal visit.

 

Using this structure, PDSA saw an up to 40% uptake of preventative medicine services and a 28% increase in treatment for problems that usually would go unnoticed with a traditional appointment. 100% of clients believed that every practice should offer this service. 

 

Through 2016 the introductory training course is free and there are still openings for the 13 December 2016 training course.

 

Please comment if you know of other similar services or have experience with PetWise MOTs. Would love to hear from you!
 

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    Brenda Bonnett

    Brenda Bonnett

    Advanced Members

    comment_57

    I saw the PetWise MOTs model demonstrated at the Human Behaviour Change for Animal Welfare conference in the UK in September 2016 and was very impressed.  I like the traffic light concept.  Although it may seem overly simple for some situations, it is an effective communication tool with clients.

     

    One always worries nowadays when we see veterinarians looking for more ways to 'generate revenue'.  However, PDSA really seems to have an emphasis on providing preventive health care.  Hopefully, having this communication model will help clients get the care they need for their pet before major problems arise.  Unfortunately, we have little good evidence in veterinary medicine as to whether our interventions really make animals healthy or live longer.  Nice to see PDSA also taking efforts to monitor the impact of the program.

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    • Jim Stephens

    Jim Stephens

    Advanced Members

    comment_61

    not sure if you have seen this paper

    Canine behaviour problems: discussions between veterinarians and dog owners during annual booster consultations (http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/early/2012/12/27/vr.101125) which provides information on  relationship between veterinarians and the addressing of problem behaviour. Although a small study it provides an insight into the difficulties of clients asking for and accessing veterinary support during the annual vaccination visit. worth a read.
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    • Kelly Arthur

    Kelly Arthur

    Advanced Members

    comment_62

    Thank you very much for the comment and link to a very interesting article Jim. Moving beyond just health and biological functioning, as Fraser described, to include the other spheres could provide both better welfare outcomes for patients and financial opportunities for veterinarians. Also neat that the paper cited the article by Shaw 2008. I am currently in a communications rotation right now with Dr. Shaw discussing some of these tough issues and learning tools to navigate them. 

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