14 Apr 2026
This recent testing time for the veterinary sector creates a chance to show what good animal care looks like. Thom Jenkins feels it is a time to make health plans shine…
Thom Jenkins
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Image: Guillermo Spelucin / Adobe Stock
It has been a bruising couple of years for the UK veterinary professions. The CMA’s market investigation. The BBC Panorama documentary. Cost-of-living pressures that have made every invoice a potential flashpoint. And through it all, veterinary teams, the people who bear the brunt on the front line, find their earnest reasons for choosing this important work cynically questioned.
Most practices I work with are already doing the things that the current scrutiny says the professions need to do better: communicating openly with clients, recommending based on clinical need and trying to make good care affordable. The frustration is real and it is legitimate. But the scrutiny is not going away. The CMA investigation highlighted a raft of issues across the sector, Defra is consulting on Veterinary Surgeons Act reform and public awareness of veterinary pricing has permanently shifted. For clinic owners considering whether to launch or refine a health care plan, all of this might feel like a reason to step back.
I would argue the opposite. The current climate presents an opportunity to demonstrate exactly what good veterinary care looks like: transparent, relationship-focused, and genuinely aligned with pet welfare. Done properly, health care plans embody these principles. Done poorly, they become precisely the kind of opaque commercial practice that erodes trust.
The CMA’s provisional decision identifies several concerns that directly relate to how veterinary practices structure and communicate their services. Chief among these are transparency around pricing, clarity about ownership and affiliations and ensuring that commercial interests do not unduly influence clinical recommendations. These are not unreasonable expectations; for many of us they reflect not only what any of us would want when entrusting someone with our family member’s care, but also what we already seek to provide to our patients.
Simultaneously, the profession faces genuine operational pressures. Staff well-being remains a critical concern, with RCVS surveys showing broad and consistent agreement that ours is a stressful line of work. Recruitment and retention are ongoing challenges. The economics of providing high-quality care are genuinely difficult, particularly for practices committed to fair wages and sustainable working hours.
Health care plans, when designed thoughtfully, can address both sets of concerns. They can provide the predictable revenue that supports sustainable business practices while simultaneously improving preventive care uptake and strengthening the relationship between practice and pet owner. The key lies in how they are structured and communicated.
A fundamental distinction exists between transactional businesses and relationship businesses. Transactional businesses optimise for individual purchases; relationship models focus on continuity of care over an individual’s lifetime. In veterinary medicine, this distinction matters enormously for patient outcomes.
Consider how pet ownership actually works. A pet joins a family, ideally receives preventive care throughout their life, occasionally requires treatment for illness or injury and eventually reaches the end of their life. The practice that sees this owner once for vaccinations and then not again until a crisis may have missed several patient advocacy opportunities. The practice that maintains regular contact, prompts appropriate preventive care and is present throughout the pet’s life story has fulfilled its role as a health care provider.
Health care plans facilitate this ongoing relationship. By bundling essential preventive care into a monthly subscription, they reduce the friction that leads to missed vaccinations, lapsed parasite prevention and skipped health checks. The pet owner commits to a relationship; the practice commits to proactive care.
This is not merely a commercial observation. The persistent and widening gap in preventive care uptake across the UK pet population is well documented by PDSA and others. Research from large-scale international studies shows that pets enrolled in health care plans receive more consistent preventive care than those attending on an ad hoc basis. They also present earlier when problems arise. The loyalty that develops is not transactional, but relational, earned through demonstrated value.
One of the most useful conversations any practice can have with a client, and one that too often gets compressed into a leaflet rack, is helping them understand that there are three distinct ways to manage the cost of their pet’s care. Pay-as-you-go covers everything at the point of need. Pet insurance exists for the unexpected. And a health care plan covers the expected: the routine preventive care your team will be recommending as a matter of course.
Insurance is something you have but hope you will not need. A health care plan covers what your pet will benefit from predictably, every year. The two are complementary, not interchangeable. Practices that take the time to explain this distinction clearly are genuinely helping their clients make better decisions, and it is the kind of conversation that builds trust precisely because it is not trying to sell anything.
The right choice for an owner is not always straightforward. I remember working in a clinic where the membership plan included neutering as standard for puppies and kittens. One owner was adamant that he did not want his dog neutered, but equally adamant that he wanted his pup on the membership. I tried to explain that without the surgery, pay-as-you-go made more sense financially for him. He was offended: “Just because I don’t want him neutered, doesn’t mean I don’t want the best for him.”
That conversation has stayed with me because it reveals something about what clients are really asking for, and how they may feel judged for their choices. While payment clarity is certainly important, when you construct a membership you are, in fact, designing more than just another way to pay.
The architecture of a health care plan communicates your values more clearly than any marketing material. Plans that emphasise discounts on medications available more cheaply online signal that the practice is competing on price. Plans that emphasise joined-up online-to-offline access, expertise, and comprehensive care signal that the practice is competing on value.
In the book The Membership Economy by Robbie Kellman Baxter, he suggests four levers when designing your plan: volume, duration, features and service.
Volume refers to how much of something is included. This might be unlimited digital consultations, a set number of in-person health checks or inclusive vaccinations. The key is ensuring that what you include genuinely promotes health rather than simply appearing generous on paper.
Duration encompasses when services can be accessed. Extended hours for chat triage, evening access to digital advice or priority booking during busy periods all add genuine value for owners whose lives do not conform to traditional opening hours.
Features include the specific products and services bundled into the plan. Here, focus on items that genuinely require veterinary oversight or benefit from your professional relationship. Vaccines, tailored parasite prevention, dental care and nutrition counselling fit naturally. Items where you cannot add professional value beyond mere supply probably do not.
Service encompasses the quality of the relationship itself. Regular check-ins, personalised health reminders and responsive communication demonstrate that membership means something more than a payment arrangement.
The CMA’s emphasis on transparency should not be viewed as an imposition. Practices genuinely delivering value have nothing to hide; transparency is an opportunity rather than a compliance requirement.
Price transparency starts with publishing what your plan costs and what it includes. Be specific. If your plan includes particular vaccinations, a custom flea and tick prevention plan and two health checks, say so clearly. Provide the equivalent pay-as-you-go cost so that owners can see the genuine savings. If the saving is modest, acknowledge this and emphasise the other benefits: convenience, budgeting, the relationship.
One practical note: if your marketing claims savings, for example, “save up to £X” or “from £Y per month”, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) requires substantiation, and “from” and “up to” figures must not exaggerate what is typically available. If you advertise savings, document how you calculated them. A simple spreadsheet showing your assumptions is usually enough. It protects you if challenged and forces clarity in your own thinking.
As Pete Orpin of SPVS observed in the wake of the Panorama documentary: “The ‘expectation gap’ is the problem. Unhappiness is directly related to the difference between expectation and reality.”
Health care plans, communicated plainly, narrow that gap to almost nothing. The client knows what they are getting. The practice knows what it is delivering. There are no surprises. So, be equally clear about what your plan does not include. Owners should never be surprised by additional charges. If dental treatment beyond a basic assessment incurs extra costs, explain this upfront. If emergency care is separate, make this explicit.
Cat owners present a particular challenge and opportunity. Data consistently shows that cats receive less preventive veterinary care than dogs. Many cat owners believe they are being kind by avoiding the stress of veterinary visits: for themselves, for their pet and for the veterinary team. They think they’re doing everyone a favour by staying home. However, they often do this without realising the potential for problems to develop undetected.
Health care plans that incorporate digital touch-points can bridge this gap. A messaging service that allows owners to share photos or videos when they notice something concerning reduces the threshold for seeking advice. It allows them to sense-check whether a particular issue justifies the stress of a visit. In addition, regular health reminders delivered digitally maintain engagement outside of clinic visits. When visits are necessary, the established relationship makes them feel less transactional.
The key insight is that cat owners are not negligent; they often simply have a different mental model of what their pet needs. Plans that meet them where they are, providing reassurance and guidance rather than simply demanding attendance, convert that concern into appropriate care.
A health care plan is only as good as your team’s ability to explain and deliver it. This requires genuine buy-in, not scripted sales pitches.
Start by ensuring your team understands why the plan exists and what it genuinely offers. Ideally it was designed with them. If your whole veterinary team believes in the plan’s value, this conviction will communicate itself naturally. If they see it as a sales target, they will likely reject it. Pet owners will also sense it, and the trust you are trying to build will not materialise.
Consider how plan membership integrates with your existing workflows. When a non-member presents for a service included in your plan, this is an opportunity to mention the plan’s existence – not to apply sales pressure, but to ensure the owner knows the option exists.
When a member uses their plan benefits, acknowledge this positively. Small moments of recognition reinforce that membership is valued.
Digital tools can reduce the friction of client awareness, sign-up and ongoing management. Self-service sign-up, automated payment collection and digital delivery of member-differentiated reminders and communications allow your team to focus on clinical care rather than administrative processes.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 introduces new rules for subscription contracts, including clearer pre-contract information, renewal reminders, cooling-off rights and easier cancellation. Implementation is expected in 2026.
Practices that already operate transparent, fair membership terms will be well placed when the new regime comes into force.
The temptation is to measure plan success purely in commercial terms: sign-up rates, retention rates, revenue per member. These metrics matter, but they are not the whole story.
Consider also tracking clinical outcomes: are plan members receiving their preventive care on schedule? Are they presenting earlier when problems arise? Is their lifetime relationship with your practice longer and more consistent? These metrics tell you whether your plan is achieving its stated purpose of better pet health and better relationships.
A poorly constructed plan can distort behaviour. If it encourages interventions that are not clinically indicated, or makes it harder to tailor care to the individual animal, it should be redesigned or abandoned. You want to ensure you have the right measures to spot when such an intervention is necessary. The plan must serve the medicine, not the other way around.
Customer effort score and related satisfaction measures help you understand the owner experience. If members find the plan confusing or feel that promises are not being kept, this will eventually manifest in cancellations, but measuring satisfaction allows you to identify and address problems earlier. Capturing the reason at time of cancellation is also a valuable source of insights.
Retention rates deserve particular attention. Cross-industry data from RevenueCat suggests that consumer subscription services typically see first-year renewal rates between 17% and 40%, with exceptional performers achieving above 50%. Veterinary health plans can and should exceed these benchmarks because the underlying relationship is stronger and the value more tangible. Practices achieving retention rates at or above 85% are demonstrating that their plans genuinely serve their members.
The CMA’s final decision is now in. Defra is moving on Veterinary Surgeons Act reform. New subscription contract regulations are on the horizon. For many in our profession, this period of scrutiny has felt disproportionate and poorly informed. The impact on morale, particularly on the front line, has been real and damaging.
But the best response to being misunderstood is not defensiveness. It is clarity.
A well-structured health care plan is one of the clearest things a practice can offer: here is what your pet needs, here is what it costs, here is how we will deliver it and here is what is not included. No hidden agenda. No fine print. Just our best clinical thinking, made accessible to you and yours.
It is not a loyalty programme. It is good veterinary medicine, structured so that more people can say yes to it. The loyalty, when it comes, is earned. And the veterinary professions have been earning it, quietly and without enough credit, for a very long time.
Thom Jenkins is co-founder and chief executive of PetsApp, a client engagement app used by more than 170 practices across the UK. He has served as chief operating officer for veterinary groups in both the UK and Asia. Thom was the inaugural chairperson of VetForum in the UK, US and Asia-Pacific and also sits on the board of YLD, a software engineering and design consultancy.