To expect my vet to claim their money through my pet insurance?

[Runnerduck34]

My labrador had an accident and dislocated her hip and needs an operation to have it pinned. Total vet bill is likely around 4k and maybe more.
I have pet insurance, never claimed before and mistakenly thought that having pet insurance would take all the worry and stress out of vets bills, how wrong was I!
Despite my insurers accepting claims direct from vets, my vets are refusing to do this and need payment immediately up front and I will need to claim the money back myself from insurers.
I asked the vet if they would please complete insurance form immediately so i could claim money back asap they said they had a back log and my form wouldn't be completed for at least 2 weeks!!
This is a huge bill and we are struggling to pay it using savings/credit card and I wonder what would happen if you couldn't pay up front- the insurance wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on! I would be happy to pay a deposit and sign an agreement promising to pay if insurers didn't pay out but expecting full immediate payment seems unfair.
If I had a car accident I wouldn't be expected to fork out thousands up front, so aibu expecting vets to claim direct from insurers?

@RabbitsAreBrave

I work in and own a vets. We do direct claims for some companies and we are generally very quick at getting forms off. Even so this means that we are currently owed £17000 by insurance companies for work that we have already done.

That is a massive risk for a small business to take. We still have to pay staff, rent, electric, rates, equipment hire, training. We never know for sure if the insurance will pay until the money is in our account.

Some insurance companies are great. Some are terrible. You would not believe the time and effort that goes into chasing insurance companies to pay or chasing clients to pay when the insurance hasn’t covered something. In fact we are currently considering employing someone just to deal with insurance claims. That’s a whole salary just to chase insurance companies for money for work we have done.

YAB totally unreasonable to expect a business to take on £4K of debt on your behalf. Think of pet insurance like travel insurance. When I needed my travel insurance I had to pay out up front and then claim it back. Pet insurance is the same.

Agreements to pay if the insurer doesn’t are not worth the paper they are written on. Just because you say you will pay later doesn’t mean you actually will. All vets have been burned by people saying that many times over. Would you work for someone and accept being told that you would get paid 6 weeks later?

Does the practice offer interest free payment through a 3rd party? We have sometimes done that if we will not accept a direct claim.

I hope your dog recovers quickly from surgery

‘Would you work for someone and accept being told you would get paid 6 weeks later?’ If it was the only way to save her dog’s life then yes I would because I value my pet’s life equally to my own. And if you cannot understand or emphasise with that then I am afraid you are in the wrong profession imo.

If vets gave treatment for free because they care about animals they would go bust and be unable to help any. Not many professionals are expected to provide a service without payment. Vets, vet nurses and other staff also have mortgages, children to feed etc. Pet owners are responsible for ensuring they can meet the needs of the pets they take on.

My dog is about to have a big op. Due to the cost I got Pre-authorisation from Petplan first to guarantee payment.

Yes I was naive about pet insurance, its the first time ive ever claimed, I suspect its something you learn from bitter experience!
However I do think vets should make clearer when you join a practice that they wont deal with insurance companies and you'll have to pay everything up front. Supposing you didnt have any savings or a credit card with sufficient limit , with a bill running into thousands your insurance would about as much use as a chocolate teapot !
Many small businesses have to wait for payment., Ive worked for companies who invoice customers after work is completed and customers have 28 days to pay . At home I have paid plumbers and builders on the same basis , so I dont see why vets are so very different.
Would be much better if insurers and vets could work together and insurers provided a list of local vets who would be happy to give treatment and claim from the insurance company.

My vet wouldn't accept direct claims until they had one claim accepte so they knew my insurance would pay out after that first time they then ever since have done a direct claim once the total reaches a certain amount.
It's slightly different in that my cat had developed what was to become a lifelong chronic conditions so not a one off event

I informed them the first time I didn't have the full amount in one go and they were ok with me paying in regular instalments.

What’s the limit on your insurance? Mines only £2.5k so wouldn’t cover the full £4K

Another reason many vets want full payment up front is because they don’t want to be chasing both you and the insurance company for money owed.

I've recently had this issue with my 'old' vets. They wanted to run some tests £300 and remove a lump £1,500, £1,800 in advance, no I couldn't claim on my insurance. I had the money in the bank but if they wanted to treat me that way then they needed to do so with all their customers. In the past while sitting in the waiting room I'd heard the receptionists ring clients "Hi I'm calling from vets4pets you haven't made this weeks payment" and also heard them say to clients as they were leaving "ok we'll add that to the bill and send it to your insurance" I'd been with them over 15 years and never once owed them a penny ... so I went to a different vets who took me on as a new customer and were prepared to claim directly from my insurance. And what a good job I did. They saw my dog. Tested all her lumps, they were all just fatty lumps and none needing removing £89 job done.

If you don't have the cash to hand then ring around, you might get lucky like I did and find a vet who will claim direct... Good luck

OP you are being very naiive.
Owning a dog can be an expensive business.
Vets don't run as charities. If you want a dog then you need to be prepared for the costs.
Vets need to be paid.
Then you claim.

I recently had a bad burst in a sewage pipe in my house.
I needed an emergency plumber to fix the problem.
Luckily I had insurance to cover the cost, but I had to pay the plumber for his work - it was not his concern whether I had insurance or not frankly, and although he was accommodating in terms of giving me invoices and receipts in detail it wasn;t his responsibility.

You are resonsible for your animal.

How vets and pet insurers interact with each other is highly variable and in the case of vets is likely to be dependent upon the past experience they have had with a variety of insurers.

I used to have pet insurance with a reputable company (as far as I knew) but also keep a credit card available with around a £5k limit on it in case a direct claim was not possible. Not that I can really afford £5k up front myself. I can’t, but it was to give me the option to pay up front. I would then have claimed against the insurance and cleared the credit card once it came through.

I understand your point, as it is so often a lot of money to cough up all at once. However, that is the vet’s point too because it is a lot to be out of pocket by when you are running a business that is probably fairly small. You wouldn’t need many such delayed payments because insurance companies were farting about without paying promptly for it to add up to a very tidy sum outstanding.

I think we all do have to bear in mind that veterinary healthcare is private healthcare. So it is unfortunately very expensive and vets are not credit agencies. They need payment as promptly as possible.

@mrt1981 it has nothing to do with a lack of empathy. I do and have helped people out on many many occasions. I have taken on pets myself that would otherwise have been euthanised. I have waived my own fees, I have extended credit where I shouldn’t. But should I accept a £4K debt meaning I may be unable to pay my own staff? What about their mortgages and and families? Or are they also lacking in empathy if they don’t want to work for free? Only in this profession do people think that if you aren’t prepared to work for nothing you are a bad person. Why is the failure to plan on the part of an owner my responsibility?

Vets wages make up less than 20% of the bill. So even if I give up my own time for free it wouldn’t make the bill that much smaller.

Having a pet is a big responsibility. If you’re not prepared for that yourself you cannot expect someone else to take that responsibility on for you. In my practice we have signs up in every room informing clients which company’s we will direct claim with. If an owner chooses to use a different company that it out of my hands.

By the way the suicide rate in vets is 4 times the national average. Perhaps you should consider that before you accuse people of having a lack of empathy

I work in the veterinary industry - some insurance companies will give definite confirmation that they WILL pay a direct claim, but many won't, and then the vet surgery is left out of pocket if at the end of treatment the company won't cover the treatment cost. Direct claims can also take time to be approved by insurance companies, so if the treatment is urgent they may not approve it in time

I've always paid up front with my Vets and Langfords in Bristol and claimed the money back from Petplan which were excellent in paying back. The Vets completed the forms and sent them off for me. I then received cheques in the post well before the credit card bill was due.

@Runnerduck34

Yes I was naive about pet insurance, its the first time ive ever claimed, I suspect its something you learn from bitter experience! However I do think vets should make clearer when you join a practice that they wont deal with insurance companies and you'll have to pay everything up front. Supposing you didnt have any savings or a credit card with sufficient limit , with a bill running into thousands your insurance would about as much use as a chocolate teapot ! Many small businesses have to wait for payment., Ive worked for companies who invoice customers after work is completed and customers have 28 days to pay . At home I have paid plumbers and builders on the same basis , so I dont see why vets are so very different. Would be much better if insurers and vets could work together and insurers provided a list of local vets who would be happy to give treatment and claim from the insurance company.

Or you should make it clear that you'd find it difficult to pay a big bill before treatment and come up with a repayment plan Why is the onus on the vet? You are asking the practice to do exactly the opposite of what you are prepared to do - wait for payment

Our vets also publicly say they need payment up front, but when we had to claim they asked who insurance was with and when they heard it was petplan they agreed to get payment direct from them. They said they only do it with two insurers as they have confidence they will pay out promptly.

Who is your insurance with?

The problem with setting up insurer/vet groups is the degree to which it favours corporate groups and larger practices. The smaller clinics simply cannot compete. I have nothing against corporate groups but think that most owners value having some choice as to what works better for them and their pets.

Second absolutely everything RabbitsAreBrave has said. I have never heard anyone suggest that if paediatricians cared about kids they would work for free but these comments are always made in any discussion about vets.

I have 5k limit on insurance, as its an accident previous health conditions wont be an issue ( but as vets are aware she doesn't have any!)
I have been with my vet for 16 years so I was a bit annoyed by their attitude tbh especially the bit about it taking them 2-3 weeks to fill out forms for my insurers. When faced with an emergency situation you don't have a chance to shop around but I will be looking at changing vets.

We’ve always had to pay then claim back, seems pretty standard. I would certainly not assume they’ll do it directly.

My vet wants payment at time of treatment unless you're with one or two specific insurers that they know pay promptly.

This happened to us recently, £3000 for our cats final illness. We asked them to make the claim directly apart from the 20% excess and they refused. It took over a month to get the money paid by the insurer. It is part of a large vet claim with (I assume) cash flow problems and less income due to COVID.

This time, I have gone to a different vet practice/insurer on the promise they will make direct claims.

*Claim=chain!

I've never had this problem, but I'm aware it depends on the insurer and the practice. I don't insure the cats or most of the horses for vet bills because once you get past one or two it makes more sense to just pay when required.
The only time I've ever paid upfront for an insured horse was when we couldn't be entirely sure till after the treatment whether it was related to an already excluded condition.

I don't think pet insurance really can be compared with other types of insurance such as car/house etc.

When a car gets pranged, it goes to a garage, the garage makes an assessment and contacts the insurance company (during office hours). The insurance can say "yes, go ahead" or "wait until we send an assessor". They can even just say "do nothing, we'll write the car off"

With pets, the treatment is often a life-saving emergency (or sometimes something else is discovered during surgery which needs immediate attention) and can't wait for insurers to give the go-ahead/wait for one of their assessors. The treatment is needed immediately. If the vet does the treatment and then the insurer later decides the claim is invalid or the cost exceeds the policy limit then they're stuck having given expensive treatment with no money to pay for the costs.

As other pp have said, some insurance companies are better than others and therefore vets can be prepared to deal direct with those ones. I see that as a goodwill gesture. It doesn't surprise me that some vets want the payment first and let the owner claim it back from their insurance.

Likewise with travel insurance, if you have a medical emergency whilst abroad, you are usually expected to pay up front (or at least a good part of it) and then claim back. Why should an A&E department in another county faff around trying to claim money back from a UK insurer? They want the money before you leave the country!

The other thing with car/house insurance is that they also have a list of approved repairers. Use one of their approved repairers and the process is much quicker (with the insurance paying direct to the repairer). Go to a garage not on their list and the claim/repair will take longer. Is there such a list for pet insurers/vets? I think the vets have to create their own lists based on bad experience (and good too).

The lesson I've learned as a pet owner is before getting a pet, make sure you have enough money (or credit limit) to cover an emergency bill. That way, whether the insurance will cover it or not, my pet can get the treatment they need immediately and the vet can be paid for providing it.

@Runnerduck34

I have 5k limit on insurance, as its an accident previous health conditions wont be an issue ( but as vets are aware she doesn't have any!) I have been with my vet for 16 years so I was a bit annoyed by their attitude tbh especially the bit about it taking them 2-3 weeks to fill out forms for my insurers. When faced with an emergency situation you don't have a chance to shop around but I will be looking at changing vets.

You are lucky its only 2 weeks! My practice had about a 4 week backlog at the height of Covid. We are still inundated with working through the backlog. We literally were working on a skeleton staff with not enough hours in the day to see patients. Staff are still on furlough. Unfortunately somethings got to give, and that usually means things like paperwork. I'm sure there are many other clients in the same position as yourself, the claims are processed in the order they come in.

Our vet , who is an independent doesn’t do any direct claims but will allow payment in instalments from regular clients . I think they’ve been burnt before where insurers have refused to pay for whatever reason . It’s unfortunate but I don’t blame them at all .

@RabbitsAreBrave is spot on.

You wouldn't believe the time that can be spent on filling out claim forms, chasing previous ones that haven't been paid, chasing clients that claims have been refused and now they won't pay etc etc. You can say you will pay but it means nothing to us.

It is a full time job that is now being done with skeleton staff.