Vets again

[pistolpete]

Just got my money back from insurance company for Megs leg injury in November which is handy as credit card bill due. What I do resent is the £12 admin fee to complete insurance form the vets charge. I used to do the insurance claim forms when I worked at the vets and could easily do five or six in an hour. That would have had me on a £60 to £72 a hour rate! I was on £9.33. :-/

 

[AShetlandBitMeOnce]

Just got my money back from insurance company for Megs leg injury in November which is handy as credit card bill due. What I do resent is the £12 admin fee to complete insurance form the vets charge. I used to do the insurance claim forms when I worked at the vets and could easily do five or six in an hour. That would have had me on a £60 to £72 a hour rate! I was on £9.33. :-/

Ours is £25 before they will even open the email with the insurance form attached..

 

[ycbm]

Just got my money back from insurance company for Megs leg injury in November which is handy as credit card bill due. What I do resent is the £12 admin fee to complete insurance form the vets charge. I used to do the insurance claim forms when I worked at the vets and could easily do five or six in an hour. That would have had me on a £60 to £72 a hour rate! I was on £9.33. :-/

They have to provide a chair, a desk, a computer, an office, heat the office, supervision, NI, pension, sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay ......

To be honest I think £12.50 is surprisingly low. Sorry!
.

 

[twiggy2]

They have to provide a chair, a desk, a computer, an office, heat the office, supervision, NI, pension, sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay ......

To be honest I think £12.50 is surprisingly low. Sorry!
.

And provide the computer system to record all the details that are used to record the details you need to fill out the claim form.
12 is very cheap and I used to do them too, yes some dont take long but others are complicated, difficult, require calls to the owner or the insurance company and lots of tooing and froing before they are sorted.
Not the clients fault you were not being paid a decent wage for the job either

 

[pistolpete]

Ours is £25 before they will even open the email with the insurance form attached..

Grr!!

 

[Gamebird]

Pretty much every insurance claim these days comes with multiple emails from the insurers with requests for information. Often the same information being requested that you have already sent 3 times. Sure, the insurance form might take 10 minutes to complete, but I'd say each claim takes over an hour in total in paperwork, phone calls and emails. Continuation claims maybe half an hour. And that's not to mention all the insurance requests for histories for horses making a claim via another practice. Just because you vaccinated the horse once 3 years ago they will contact you to get a history sent through, even if the horse has moved 200 miles away since then.

Then you have to add in the fact the most (equine) practices don't ask the client to pay the bill up front then claim it back - they will wait for their money until the claim has been paid. So they are out of pocket until the insurers pay up. Sometimes this is days, but with a complicated claim it can be months. Months and months. I currently have a claim on my desk which has not yet been settled and is for a large 4 figure sum. The claim was initially submitted over 6 months ago.

The time and expenses detailed above by ycbm and others have to come from somewhere. Either you pay a specific fee, or you will pay for it via increased visit/exam/diagnostic fees. And that's not really fair on uninsured clients.

 

[milliepops]

my vets don't yet charge for claim forms but as above posts explain i wouldn't object if they did, it's another service after all.

 

[AShetlandBitMeOnce]

I have no issue with paying it but it's a bit frustrating that they charge this, and I pay it by BACS immediately, and then it takes 8 weeks for the vet to actually complete their part of it by which point I have usually already racked up £1000+ in costs. Obviously I wouldn't change what I would have done based on whether it is being paid for by insurance or not, if the horse needed it, but it does make a stressful time more stressful.

 

[Gamebird]

8 weeks is bonkers! We would aim to have the initial claim form completed and sent off within a week of receiving it. Although that would ideally be at the completion of treatment, or at the end of each large chunk of treatment - it creates too much faff and extra work completing one form after the first visit, then hundreds of continuations every time more drugs are ordered or every time the horse is re-examined.

 

[Birker2020]

8 weeks is bonkers! We would aim to have the initial claim form completed and sent off within a week of receiving it. Although that would ideally be at the completion of treatment, or at the end of each large chunk of treatment - it creates too much faff and extra work completing one form after the first visit, then hundreds of continuations every time more drugs are ordered or every time the horse is re-examined.

I'm afraid my experience is like ASBMO too. I received my claim form from my insurance company within 30 mins of making the call to log the claim. Within an hour of receiving it I'd filled it in, scanned and emailed it over to my vets for the vet to complete his bit. I rang after 7 1/2 weeks to find out if the insurance were honouring the claim and was told that the claim form was still sat on the vets desk. Then I started getting text messages asking me to make payment towards the outstanding amount yet I'd already had a bit on account and made three payments weekly. So I said I didn't want to make payments when I didn't know how much I owed and how much the insurance company were going to pay towards.

After all this toing and froing I rang yesterday and said I'd not be making anymore payments until I knew exactly what part of it I had to pay for. Incredibly within a couple of hours I was told that the insurance had paid out on my claim and I was actually in credit!

 

[ester]

I’d pay more than that to have someone deal with all the forms and subsequent necessary contacts in my life ?

 

[AShetlandBitMeOnce]

8 weeks is bonkers! We would aim to have the initial claim form completed and sent off within a week of receiving it. Although that would ideally be at the completion of treatment, or at the end of each large chunk of treatment - it creates too much faff and extra work completing one form after the first visit, then hundreds of continuations every time more drugs are ordered or every time the horse is re-examined.

Agreed. I just wanted the initial form to be completed to see if they would accept the claim based on the symptoms or whether it would come under an exclusion - nothing more required in terms of follow up forms until as you say, either it's done or there has been a huge chunk of spends. It was madness, I then got emails to say that I would be charged interest on the outstanding balance as I said I was unwilling to make payment until I find out whether or not the claim was accepted - I was naively hopeful that this would make them hurry with the form, I had the money waiting in my account should it be declined.

 

[Landcruiser]

WE only charge £5 admin fee at our vet, just about to double to £10 because it was unsustainable. We have 2 part time admin staff who deal with the claims. Some are easy, but some are a total PIA and require lots of chasing, toing and froing with info, letters and declarations written by vets, histories, lab results, clarifications..previous histories..they take an age to deal with. It's absolutely right that vets charge for this service, because as already pointed out, the whole infrastructure has to be provided and sustained and has to be paid for somehow.

 

[twiggy2]

I can't remember if the jnsirance company cover the cost of the vets filling in the forms or not?

 

[SEL]

I can't remember if the jnsirance company cover the cost of the vets filling in the forms or not?

Mine didn't (KBIS and Petplan) - but I think it was only £17.

I don't begrudge the vets that money at all. In fact I think one of them saved me a lot, lot more than that with her effort to pull together every single invoice and cost that could be related to the last claim I put in! Not helped by the fact that Petplan then sat on the claim for weeks and weeks blaming me, the vet, covid and just about anything else they could think of.

 

[twiggy2]

Mine didn't (KBIS and Petplan) - but I think it was only £17.

I don't begrudge the vets that money at all. In fact I think one of them saved me a lot, lot more than that with her effort to pull together every single invoice and cost that could be related to the last claim I put in! Not helped by the fact that Petplan then sat on the claim for weeks and weeks blaming me, the vet, covid and just about anything else they could think of.

Thanks for the reply

 

[pistolpete]

I can't remember if the jnsirance company cover the cost of the vets filling in the forms or not?

Pet plan don’t.

 

[twiggy2]

Mine didn't (KBIS and Petplan) - but I think it was only £17.

I don't begrudge the vets that money at all. In fact I think one of them saved me a lot, lot more than that with her effort to pull together every single invoice and cost that could be related to the last claim I put in! Not helped by the fact that Petplan then sat on the claim for weeks and weeks blaming me, the vet, covid and just about anything else they could think of.

Pet plan don’t.

I do feel the insurance companies should cover the cost of paperwork involved in the policy.
We only charged an admin fee if we had to be paid by the insurance company, if owners paid direct at the time then an admin fee was not charged.

 

[milliepops]

I do feel the insurance companies should cover the cost of paperwork involved in the policy.
We only charged an admin fee if we had to be paid by the insurance company, if owners paid direct at the time then an admin fee was not charged.

that's a good compromise.
I agree it's a hidden cost of insurance if the owner has to cough up for the admin fee.

 

[paddy555]

Mine charged £35 for my dog's various claims all relating to the same problem. They have claimed nearly 7k in about 7 claims. They struggled to diagnose his problem, he had endless tests and medications. There is no way I could have completed the form. If I had there would have been endless questions from the insurance as it all looked very strange. They knew exactly what to put on the form and how to describe things. They waited a long time for payment of 3k when Petplan failed to log in one of the claims.
I think they have done a great job at that price.
My new claims year starts this month when I will have to pay another excess. Does anyone know if the vets will charge another £35? I don't mind if they do as they will be making another 13 claims this next year if the dog remains alive. Just wondered. (same illness which is ongoing)