31 Jul What’s the difference between a pet health plan and pet insurance?

What’s the difference between a pet health plan and pet insurance?

A pet health plan combined with comprehensive pet insurance is the ideal health coverage for your pet. But, they are very different in terms of their purpose! At their most basic level, pet health plans cover routine, preventative care, such as vaccinations and parasite treatments. They are unique to your veterinary practice, while pet insurance helps with unexpected veterinary costs from illness or injury. 

Pet Health Plan

When it comes to a pet health plan, ours is amongst the elite! The Wolfe Pack has 3 tiers of coverage to suit all budgets and offers unlimited consultations. It allows you to both simplify care and make it exceptional value for money. It essentially helps to spread the cost of routine treatments by paying monthly for membership to the plan. 

The purpose of preventative care is simply to prevent. It covers standard and essential routine healthcare and provides the opportunity to identify potential issues at their earliest stage. This maximises treatment opportunities with early intervention. This means peace of mind for you and better wellbeing for your pet.

A health plan helps you to budget for regular pet care and rewards you with discounts, but it does not provide financial coverage for accidents, illness or injury. With that being said, what makes our health plan, The Wolfe Pack, truly unique is that within our Wolfe Pack 24/7 tier, unlimited out-of-hours emergency consults are included! 

We are unparalleled in terms of the care we provide to pets and the attention we give to pet owners. If your pet is unwell, we have the staff and facilities to manage critical or worrying injuries and illnesses, 24 hours a day. We are local and offer all routine health services, vaccinations, travel documentation and routine surgery. In addition, different to other vet practices nearby and further afield, these services are provided in RCVS (Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons) Accredited, medically state-of-the-art premises, by the best trained team of vets, recognised by the RCVS. We are much more than a local vet practice. We accept referrals from other London vet clinics in surgery, imaging, dentistry and ophthalmology. So, whether we are treating a routine health issue or an emergency, your pet is in the best hands. 

If you would like to find out more about our health plans, you can read more here. 

Pet insurance

Pet insurance is often described as a ‘financial safety net’ to cover unexpected bills for accidents and illnesses. Depending on the severity of the required treatment, insurance helps to alleviate the financial burden of unforeseen treatment costs. 

Whilst we cannot recommend particular providers, we always recommend policies that renew all cover every year (lifelong), have complete dental protection and provide at least £10k provision, so that you do not need to worry about finances if your beloved pet needs advanced care. Providers and policies differ, so be sure that you have cover for the aspects you feel are most important, as each pet owner’s circumstances are different. 

Pet insurance works similarly to human health insurance, whereby you pay a monthly premium, and the insurance company helps pay for treatments when your pet needs veterinary care.

What are the benefits of both?

Pet Insurance:

• Provides peace of mind that any expensive treatments are covered when you are potentially overwhelmed with worry about your pet. 
• It could potentially save you a substantial amount of money in the long run.
• If you are not in a position to have quick access to funds to pay for treatment, you can rest assured that you will never have to compromise on treatments for your beloved pet, should the unthinkable happen.

Pet Health Plans:

• All of your pet’s routine healthcare is covered in one place.
• As well as spreading the cost, it could also help to detect potential issues early, preventing bigger health concerns which could be more costly and most importantly, limit any potential suffering by your pet
• You will also receive additional discounts on other services.

If you would like to sign up to our Wolfe Pack, you can do so here. Similarly, our friendly team are always on hand to discuss the tier which may suit you and your pet best, as well as advising on what you may like to consider, should you also be in the market for a pet insurance policy. As a practice, we recommend both, because ultimately, pets are family and deserve the best! Perhaps that’s why we are the vets your pet would choose…