Despite the importance of wellness care testing, many clients may not understand its value and hesitate to accept their veterinarian's recommendations. Sometimes these pet owners just need to see the numbers. Tracking wellness care results in a comprehensive database can provide meaningful evidence that veterinarians can show clients and veterinary team members to prove the true frequency of abnormalities, emphasize the importance of testing, and provide valuable information about an individual pets' baseline values.

The Importance of Preventive Screening Diagnostics

Laboratory reference intervals are based on samples from a population of healthy pets. We would expect that 95% of the healthy pet population falls within that reference interval. However, that leaves us with 5% of healthy pets that can have results that are outside of that range but would be considered normal for that individual. Likewise, having a baseline for your individual patient when it is healthy allows your to spot clinically relevant changes for that patient even if the results still fall within the reference interval.

  Explaining the value of preventive care to pet owners can be difficult. Access these easy-to-understand educational materials to help you and your team communicate the benefits.

Additionally, serial laboratory screening tests allow veterinarians to track trends and potentially diagnose diseases in their early stages. Veterinarians should start screenings with young adult pets as early diagnosis may provide more opportunities for intervention.

Client Compliance Challenges

Pet owners with seemingly healthy pets may decline routine screening tests, perceiving them as unnecessary and costly rather than a proactive investment in their pet's future health. To address this, veterinary professionals can emphasize wellness care as a cost-effective strategy for managing pet health. By explaining how preventive care diagnostics may help identify issues early, and could reduce the need for more extensive and expensive treatments later, veterinarians can help clients understand the value of investing in their pet's long-term well-being.

However, a veterinarian educating on the risk of possible undiagnosed future illnesses and recommending preventive care screening may not sway some clients. Overcoming the perception that screening tests aren't worth the cost requires effective communication and education.

Tracking Diagnostic Results

Showing clients hard data that represent infectious disease incidence or blood work abnormalities can be the wake-up call they need. Using visual aids such as graphs and charts can be more helpful in highlighting the prevalence of certain abnormalities in seemingly healthy pets. These aids can help pet owners connect the dots with their own seemingly healthy pet during the wellness exam. For example, if a pet owner sees how often lyme disease is detected in a region, they may be more inclined to agree to a comprehensive VBD screening.

This kind of data can also be helpful for practice initiatives on expanding veterinary preventive care testing. Data can help persuade reticent team members who do not always recommend testing to all pet owners. Once these team members see the prevalence numbers, they may feel more comfortable recommending screening diagnostics in exam rooms and worry less about feeling like a salesperson.

Preventive Care Diagnostics Tracking Tools

Veterinary practices can use published Companion Animal Parasite Council data or leverage their reference laboratories to source and analyze internal data. Ask your local representative for statistics on your practice's incidence of heartworm, tick-borne diseases, feline viral diseases, parasites, or abnormal organ function biomarkers.

Some reference lab partners can provide data in a centralized dashboard that shows disease incidence by species and age compared with data from surrounding counties and regions. Veterinary teams can regularly request this data to help guide clinical decisions and motivate clients.

Supporting the Wellness Care Conversation

Unexpected positive test results or internal health abnormalities occur more frequently than many pet owners and veterinary professionals realize. To help veterinary professionals understand the impact of wellness screenings and support client conversations, an IDEXX study analyzed more than 200,000 wellness profiles and discovered the following frequencies of significant findings that represent the likelihood of clinically relevant abnormalities in patients:

• 1 in 7 young adult dogs; 1 in 5 young adult cats
• 1 in 5 mature adult dogs; 1 in 3 mature adult cats
• 2 in 5 senior dogs; 3 in 5 senior cats

This study looked at complete blood count, chemistry, and urinalysis in seemingly healthy pets and the findings help illustrate the value of veterinary preventive care testing. The number of pets who test positive for intestinal parasites, heartworms, retroviruses, or tick-borne diseases can also add valuable information into a pet's preventive care diagnostic profile. Therefore, making use of detailed data from your practice and surrounding areas can make client conversations more impactful.

Sharing data can improve client compliance by demonstrating the value of veterinary preventive care and ensuring veterinary teams have the necessary tools for personalized and relevant pet health recommendations.

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