A deeper dive into pet food purchases

Drs Cline and Saker explain the advantages and disadvantages of your clients purchasing their pets’ foods including ordering online, the benefits of keeping pet food at your practice, and more.

View the full video transcription below.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Hey everyone, we are going to be talking about the value of pet nutrition in and out of the exam rooms and hospitals. I'm Dr Adam Christman, Chief Veterinary Officer here at Fetch dvm360. Thank you so much for joining us. With us today are Dr Martha Cline and Dr Korinn Saker, board-certified veterinary nutritionist. Thank you so much for joining with us.

Martha Cline, DVM, Diplomate ACVN: Thanks for having us.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Yeah, you know, we know that pet food isn't a big practice revenue generator. But what are some things that we can do to kind of try to help maintain keeping, maybe, the pet food supply either in or near the veterinarians’ hands?

Martha Cline, DVM, Diplomate ACVN: So one of the strategies that we do in our own practice is that we do stock food in our hospital, so that when we are prescribing a diet to a pet owner, that we can send them home with something to get them started. And then we actually utilize an online pharmacy that's partnered with our hospital, and then we set them up with an online script. One thing that I've noticed in practice, from when I started, is how much of our food sales were brick and mortar, but how much now, even myself, I have food for my pets arrived at my front step. And so a lot of people are turning to e-commerce now. And so, there's a lot of opportunity, from a practice standpoint, to utilize e-commerce to help provide the foods to our clients.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Do you find that clients are utilizing any rebates or promotions or anything like that, that other manufacturers or hospitals are offering them?

Martha Cline, DVM, Diplomate ACVN: I do think that some of them are utilizing those, and it is a good opportunity for the client to be able to do that. And so I know some companies have made those available to pet owners.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: And do you find that so let's say they go to online, and they purchase it elsewhere or whatnot? What are some things that a pet owner should be mindful of in terms of buying prescription food or any type of food online?

Korinn Saker, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVN: Well, in order to buy prescription food online, they need a prescription, and that prescription needs to come from their veterinarian, whether it's the board-certified nutritionist, or whether it's their primary care veterinarian. And so first of all, they need that, and I'm going to assume that they were given the correct prescription. And so, they're ordering the correct diet. With that prescription, generally the ones we write, it gives you...they asked for a dose, feeding dose and frequency. But from the nutritionist perspective, at the same time, you're giving them a prescription so they can order their food online. You're giving them a consult that you prepared for their pet based on the conversation you had with them. And so, they should have all of the information that they need in terms of appropriate feeding. And we give them two options of chewy.com and petdiets.com to order through. Our situation, because we're a teaching hospital, is very different than Dr Cline'd that's a private practice.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Yeah, to find that veterinarians get frustrated, knowing like "Oh my gosh, I just spent 20 minutes, 30 minutes talking about diet, creating a recommendation." And lo and behold, they take your prescription, and they go online.

Martha Cline, DVM, Diplomate ACVN: I do that that can be an area of frustration for some veterinarians. Legally, we're obligated to write prescriptions, if that's something that our client requests of us. And so we typically have to do that. And they are free to purchase the diets, whenever they want. However, they need to have a prescription to be able to do that. And so if they're buying a therapeutic type diet without a prescription, that should be a red flag for the client, for sure. And then again, I think this is the opportunity where many private practices utilizing an online pharmacy as an extension of their own pharmacy. And so, when I think about the online pharmacy that we have for our own hospital, it's really an extension of our brick-and-mortar pharmacy. And so our clients are able to go to our own website, go to the pharmacy, on our own website, order the food, it's automatically connected to our system so that we're able to do the approvals through that...declines if they haven't been seen in a while. So, it is a really good opportunity for us to do that and to have more control over the prescription for our client.

Korinn Saker, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVN: And at the same time, right, you don't have to have...your hospital doesn't have to have a huge stock of diet on hand, particularly the really large bags that take up room. They take someone to move them around. And so...

Martha Cline, DVM, Diplomate ACVN: Space is really valuable in a hospital and in a pharmacy. And so being able to set clients up to receive these larger bags of food or maybe these larger orders, while still being able to send them home with a bag of food. I think being able to send them home with some food to build a little bit of compliance from that standpoint. And then just having the staff automatically set them up with an online order. Again, these are opportunities for us to create compliance with our nutrition recommendations.

Korinn Saker, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVN: So I think it's really important to draw [from] that...pet food companies, make smaller bags available. And certainly, cat foods come in small bags. They can come in large ones. But mainly they come in small size bags 4, 6, and 8 pounds, if you will. But some of the dog foods do not and even a smaller size bag than that would be really nice to have to keep in your clinic. You could still charge the client some for it, and then turn around and, you know, have them order something off your online pharmacy after they tried some things out to see what their pet will eat. And what they tolerate best based on your recommendation,

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Right, and like you said, Dr Cline, it really does set them up for success too. They have something tangible they can walk right out the door with, and you can set them up for something like that. What about when you have a multidoctor practice and you have, you know, 10 doctors are like, "Well, I like this food; I like that one." And then all of a sudden, you look at the back of your inventory, and you might have like 6 to 8...10 different brands of pet food in there. What are some recommendations that you would give to the general practitioners that have more than one doctor in the practice and multiple wants and needs for foods?

Martha Cline, DVM, Diplomate ACVN: Yeah, that's really challenging. And I work in a large practice with a lot of wants and desires for products from a very large group of doctors. And so one of the ways that we tried to think about setting that up, is we really looked more system-based. Okay, so these are all of our kidney diets, kind of getting a consensus from the group like: Okay, what are we going to carry in the hospital vs what are we going to utilize more on an online basis on an online pharmacy basis? What are we want to have in the hospital for weight loss diets, instead of carrying every single one of them, maybe we're carrying just some of them. And so, trying to think about it more from that standpoint. And even though companies are going to make diets that all fall into the same category. So like to take urinary diets, for example, there may be enough differences between the 2 that, you know, maybe you would recommend 1 over another for certain pets. And so, I think kind of thinking about your pharmacy in terms of "these are all the conditions I want to meet." And then what are the diets from the individual companies that maybe I want to carry to kind of help streamline the pharmacy a little bit. Because I know we have to kind of rethink our pharmacy every couple years, what we're carrying, and based on new diets that are available. And sometimes, even in that couple years, that we haven't gone through and kind of retailored our inventory, it can get a little messy, you know. So, it is kind of a work in progress, especially as we see more diets coming out. And then again, just another plug for, if we want to have so many different options available to us, utilizing the online pharmacy as an extension of your own pharmacy.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Sometimes I feel like what messages [you] give to your clients when you have so many different foods that are out there because they're coming to you for a suggestion. And when you have, maybe it's in your waiting room or online store, you have like 8 to 10 different foods, they want to be streamlined. Sometimes they'll just say, "Doc, just tell me what food I need to put my cat on." Right?

Korinn Saker, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVN: And they do that a lot. Particularly if they have an illness that we're trying to manage. But I think along with what Dr Cline was saying, I think you need to have education with your other veterinarians whose specialty is not nutrition, because a lot of times their favorite diet is one that they used the whole time they were in their training program. And you know, that's what they're used to feeding. And so that's what they like. And that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the best option to have in your hospital for all the different types of situations you're going to see. So education of them to tell them what's the difference between this weight loss diet and that, and what's the difference between this stone diet and this one...and can you use this stone diet for stones but something else? So, it's a multiuser diet, rather than having 2 or 4 separate diets in the hospital. And so doing that on a regular basis, I think it's a compromise.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Oh yeah, it's got to be a compromise.

Martha Cline, DVM, Diplomate ACVN: Yeah, for sure.