the best chance for effective management. The owners consent to a lifetime of optimal care for their pet, and decide that pet health insurance is a good mechanism for managing some of their concerns regarding the costs of Rocky's healthcare (see 10.16 Pet Health Insurance).
A personalized pet care plan or profile is just a maintenance schedule of anticipated care expected for a pet over its lifetime.
Other than routine preventive care, early detection screening is added to the plan based on risk factors specific to the individual pet.
The care plan should be dynamic and will be altered as new medical findings (including medication monitoring) are added to the schedule.
The pet care plan can act as a sort of user's manual, alerting the pet owner to care anticipated for a pet over its lifetime.
Genetic screening during puppy and kitten visits can help inform both veterinary teams and pet owners about additional testing to be considered in a pet's future.
1.3.9 Cautions
No matter how vigilant we are, it is impossible to identify all risk factors for an animal, and it is important not to misrepresent this situation to clients. Personalized care plans are meant to address the most common disorders likely to affect an individual. Routine veterinary visits and vigilant screening and monitoring are critical to ensuring that even unanticipated disorders can be diagnosed and managed with some expediency.
Abbreviation
DNADeoxyribonucleic acid
References
1 1 Ackerman, L.J. (2011). The Genetic Connection, 2e. Lakewood, CO: AAHA Press.
2 2 American Veterinary Medical Association (2012). US Pet Ownership & Demographics Sourcebook. Schaumburg, IL: AVMA.
3 3 Simpson, R.J., Simpson, K.J., and VanKavage, L. (2012). Rethinking dog breed identification in veterinary practice. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 241 (9): 1163–1166.
4 4 Ackerman, L. What veterinary healthcare teams should know about genetic testing. AAHATrends, 2019.
Recommended Reading
1 Ackerman, L. (2011). The Genetic Connection: A Guide to Health Problems in Purebred Dogs, 2e. Lakewood, CO: AAHA Press.
2 Ackerman, L. Personalized medicine improves outcomes. Today's Veterinary Business, 2018. https://todaysveterinarybusiness.com/personalized‐medicine‐improves‐outcomes
3 Ackerman, L. (2019). An introduction to pet‐specific care. EC Veterinary Science 4 (1): 1–3.
4 Ackerman, L. (2020). Personalized pet profiles. In: Five‐Minute Veterinary Practice Management Consult, 3e (ed. L. Ackerman), 268–271. Ames, IA: Wiley.
5 Ackerman, L. (2020). Proactive pet parenting: Anticipating pet health problems before they happen. Problem Free Publishing.
6 American Animal Hospital Association (2012). Evolving to a Culture of Prevention: Implementing Integrated Preventive Care, 1–23. Lakewood, CO: AAHA.
7 Bell, J.S., Cavanagh, K.E., Tilley, L.P., and Smith, F.W.K. (2012). Veterinary Medical Guide to Dog and Cat Breeds. Jackson, WY: Teton New Media.
8 Hamburg, M.A. and Collins, F.S. (2010). The path to personalized medicine. N. Engl. J. Med. 363 (4): 301–304.
9 World Small Animal Veterinary Association. Hereditary diseases. https://wsava.org/global‐guidelines/hereditary‐disease‐guidelines/
1.4 Opportunities for Pet-Specific Care
Nan Boss, DVM
Best Friends Veterinary Center, Grafton, WI, USA
Tailoring your healthcare recommendations to the wants and needs of individual patients and clients is good medicine and good business. It is easier (and less expensive) to make the most of the clients you already have than it is to find new ones. Chances are good you have the potential to grow your practice by offering more to your current clients – services that can increase the healthspans of the pets they love. As a bonus, clients who have been made to feel special and unique tend to refer others with a similar philosophy to pet care.
1.4.1 Terms Defined
Healthspan: The portion of a pet's life in which it is considered generally healthy, in contradistinction to lifespan which is the quantity of time a pet is alive.
1.4.2 Veterinary Teams are Teachers
There are dozens of factors that influence how an individual pet will be cared for. Most of these are out of our control. We don't choose the genetics of the animals (but we can counsel; see 3.4 Predicting and Eliminating Disease Traits), their lifestyles or how the client was raised to treat or care for pets. However, we do have influence over how we deliver information to our clients, and we choose the services and products we promote and market to them. We have hundreds of opportunities every week to teach our clients about what is available to them, why it's important for their pets, and how we can deliver it. The better the care we offer and the more customized it is to the needs of the specific pet, the longer our patients will live and the greater their healthspans will be.
We are responsible for the health and well‐being of our patients. If a pet dies from a disease for which we had a preventive or a treatment that we never told the client about, that pet's death is at least partially our responsibility. It is our job to tell the client what products or services would benefit their pet – without judging, prejudging or making assumptions about what the pet owner wants or doesn't want done. It is their job to decide which services and products they want. We should be giving them enough information to make sound decisions. We create opportunity for ourselves by giving pet guardians choices as to levels of care. Ways to personalize care for each client and patient include:
