Petplan ground-breaking trial

VetEnvoy is currently involved in a ground-breaking trial with Pet Plan and Pet Protect and several veterinary practices to underscore the efficiency gains and service improvements that it can bring about. Other insurance companies (e.g. AXA) are looking to join the trial soon while still others (e.g. Direct Line and Norwich Union) are currently evaluating the opportunity.

“Receiving claims electronically has to be the future,” said Simon Wheeler, Head of Marketing and Partnerships at Petplan. “Although our existing paper-based process is very slick – it has to be given the tremendous number of claims received and processed each day – VetEnvoy will make processing more efficient. Claims will be delivered immediately and an electronic audit trail means that vets can be certain of receipt by Petplan. And the resulting reduction in settlement time offers significant client benefit.”

Mike Fletcher, Director of LiveTime 24/7 developers of VetEnvoy said, “This trial is really showing the worth and power of VetEnvoy in simplifying and speeding up the processing of insurance claims. This means that the current average cost of processing a claim – which can be around £5 or more – could be cut by at least half. Also, by utilising the information that Vets already hold within their Practice Management System (PMS), it’s also dramatically cutting down the chances of mistakes being introduced when compiling the information.”

Here are some of the actual comments from practices involved in the trial:

• "Vastly superior performance compared with paper claims, emails or faxes – the saving in staff admin time is tremendous"
• "Brilliant – works a treat!"
• "Very successful trial – simple and take’s less time"
• "Payment is very quick – within a week sometimes"
• "Much faster, more efficient, with far less complaints"
• "We do hundreds of claims per month – we’d be happy paying 25p per claim".

The practices, one of which has over 10 vets, utilise different PMS’ (Vet-One and Midshire’s Ventana). Other PMS vendors are in the process of implementing VetEnvoy (i.e. Teleos) while still others have indicated their intention to adopt VetEnvoy soon. So far well over 1000 electronic claims have been sent through VetEnvoy in the pilot trials – demonstrating beyond doubt the real power of VetEnvoy in being able to efficiently and quickly exchange information in a secure way. From inside the PMS, the insurance claim is quickly compiled from information already held on file. Additional information can be quickly added via drop-down menus or text boxes if necessary. All of which greatly speeds things up and reduces the chances of mistakes being made.

Lowering administrative burden and costs, improving productivity and cash flow, and providing better control

Once the information has been compiled, a click of the mouse will send it electronically to the insurer, who’ll then be able to process it more quickly because it is in electronic format.

Mike Fletcher continued, “The innovative ‘smart’ workflow management built into VetEnvoy means that the vet is kept informed at all stages of the process – from when the claim has been received, through processing, to when it’s paid. Also, if the insurer has a query this will be made electronically too, helping to speed up the entire process even further.

We believe that in many cases it will slash the time between the claim being started to subsequently being received by the insurer – possibly from 7 days to 7 minutes! A transformation with important cash-flow implications.”