Petriage Expands Its Veterinary Services To Introduce Integrated Pet Curbside Check-in, 24/7 Live Triage Consultation And Simplified Billing

BELLEVUE, Wash., March 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With a vast majority of veterinarians reporting they're burnt out from COVID-19-related stress, Petriage is expanding and streamlining its services to provide vet practices with the digital tools they need to prosper.

The rapidly growing B2B pet health technology company – whose unique online pet symptom checker last month received the industry-first patent for its vet-validated teletriage tool – announced new services designed to make vet practices more efficient for practitioners, clinic staffs and pet parents, at a time when safety and convenience are top priorities. They include:

• Petriage Curbside, which simplifies the check-in and check-out processes for pet owners at curbside of a vet clinic while improving its workflow, freeing up phone lines and streamlining client communication via customizable forms and contactless payment, even for clients without a Petriage account.
• Petriage Live, an optional phone-based consultative triage service that provides trusted advice to pet owners any time from a team of dedicated licensed veterinary nurses and veterinarians, following a pet owner's use of Petriage's AI-driven symptom checker. The remote consultations mean a clinic's veterinarians no longer have to be on-call 24/7 to provide personalized service.
• A two-tier subscription platform for vet practices that consolidates Petriage's previous three-tier system and enables vets to more cost-effectively incorporate telemedicine and strengthen their relationship with pet owners.

"Our mission is to offer an integrated approach to veterinary care that gives vets more flexibility and efficiency and pet owners a one-stop destination that fulfills their pet-care needs," says Petriage CEO Joe Coury. "These additional offerings and other innovative telehealth technologies and services we're developing, including wearables and enhanced data analytics capabilities, will deepen the trust between pet owners and their vets and improve vets' quality of life and practice effectiveness, at a time when practices are under immense stress."

New Services Address Stress Reported by Over 75% of Vets in New WSVMA Study

A recent joint survey commissioned by Petriage and the Washington State Veterinary Medical Association of the state's vets found that 76% of respondents are very or extremely concerned by their team's level of stress and burn out.

"Vets' deep concern about their and their team's health isn't surprising," explains Shlomo Freiman, DVM, Petriage's chief veterinary officer and a co-founder. "The pandemic has brought a huge shift in how most run their clinics and communicate with their pet owners and also a dramatic rise in the number of pet owners."

During the pandemic, pet adoptions, especially by millennials, have surged and outpaced available shelter animals as people change the way they live their lives. Shelter Animal Counts, which tracks about 500 rescue organizations around the county, recorded a 15% rise in pet adoptions in 2020 than a year earlier. Nationally, two-of-three U.S. households included a pet in 2020 with 393.3 million pets owned, according to the 2019-2020 National Pet Owners Survey conducted by the American Pet Products Association.

COVID-19 also has impacted vets and their staffs especially hard, reflecting the close personal contact and care they give their pet owners and pets. The survey of Washington State vets found that nearly 40% of respondents or their staff members have contracted the coronavirus and 8.3% have closed their clinics at one time or another as a result. Consequently, remote teletriage services and use of curbside service have grown in popularity among vet clinics.

"Our new services, combined with our remote triage infrastructure, set Petriage further apart from competing telehealth services as a full circle-of care telehealth solution," says Allon Freiman, Petriage's chief strategy officer and a co-founder. "Our joint survey of vets with the WSVMA underscores the importance of 21^st century services to vets, especially to improve their clinics' workflow."

Seventy-five percent of survey respondents said their workflow can be at least moderately improved through services Petriage already offers. These include contactless payment processing, integration with practice management software, an automated teletriage tool, appointment scheduling, customizable check-in forms, two-way messaging between vet and pet owner, and live video chat.

The survey also makes plain that a growing percentage of vets are offering remote teletriage services – nearly 32% from practically none three years ago – and providing curbside. Nearly 90% have instituted curbside with roughly 70% of them saying they expect to continue it.

Allon Freiman notes that Petriage Curbside improves a clinic's workflow, streamlines communication, frees up phone lines, enhances client relationships and increases revenue. Plus, he adds, "Just as important, it provides safety and convenience to a veterinarian's staff and clients, including convenient prescription pick-up or drop offs." 

Introduces Live Consultative Triage Services, Streamlines Fee Structure to Make Pet Telehealth Accessible to More Clinics

Petriage Live delivers consultative triage services to pet owners from a trusted network of vets and veterinary nurses trained to adhere to the Code of Professional Conduct. They follow set protocols that ensure consistent and high-quality veterinary advice.  

Petriage's streamlined two-tier fee system makes pet telehealth accessible to more clinics by lowering the barrier to entry. It reduced its pricing to Petriage Essential, a $49.99 monthly clinic fee for teletriage, telemonitoring, curbside and live vet or vet nurse interaction, and Petriage Premium, a $199.99 monthly fee that adds telemedicine and practice management system integration.

The previous three-tier fee system ranged in cost from $49.99 for essential service to $299.99 for premium service, with each vet clinic determining how much their clients pay for access to Petriage and its services. Most of its vet partners choose to cover Petriage's fee in the annual pet exam, so that as many clients as possible have access to the benefits of telehealth.

About Petriage

Petriage is a B2B pet health technology company that brings fully integrated telehealth services to veterinary practices and their clients. Designed by a vet specifically for veterinarians, its platform provides a unique user-friendly way for vets to communicate with clients and deliver care to pets remotely, including a proprietary patented teletriage app in which pet parents are provided a recommendation in real-time about the need and urgency to seek medical care for their pets. Learn more at petriage.com.

SOURCE Petriage

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https://petriage.com/