Quick review
The good
The not-so-good
Vet trips can be planned, but more often than not, they’re an emergency. Could an online VetChat telecommute make them easier?
When you need to visit a doctor, you can usually book a telehealth appointment and at least get a sense of the next steps over the phone, but for pets, things are different.
When pets are feeling sick, it’s usually a trip to the vet straight away, or if you can’t get a booking, it’s a trip to the closest pet emergency room, something that amounts to a serious price tag. We’ve been there and done that several times in the past year, once for the old dog and again for the new one.
Trips like that are a must have when something is dire and especially concerning or critical, but what about when you don’t know? Can you turn to a telehealth service for pets?
It was August when we’d find out you absolutely could, as digital vet services arrive for a monthly fee.
What is VetChat Plus?
One of the handful of veterinary services making their way to the online world, VetChat Plus is essentially Healthcare-as-a-Service as applied to pets.
The idea is simple: you sign up, log in, and ask to speak to a vet. The system then connects you through to a veterinarian who can chat to you over the web, and eyeball what’s going on, while asking you to try small things in order to provoke reactions to your pet, with expert advice following on from that.
In short, it’s telehealth for pets in a subscription service.
What is it available on?
Built as a website as opposed to an app, you can use VetChat on pretty much anything that has a web browser. Laptops will do, but we found the better experience was via tablets and phones, thanks in part to the obvious requirement of a camera.
You really need a camera that you can move around for this one, largely because the vet on the other end is going to ask you to show your animal, and possibly do some small things such as feel their stomach, their side, look at their tongue, and so on.
Vets come from a variety of places across Australia, but you’ll only know them by their name. Dr this and Dr that, of course.
A little research found these vets working at practices across the country, connecting in places such as Albury and Canberra, and essentially giving you access in the less busy times for these veterinarians.
They’re real and exist, and you can find them if you do a bit of legwork, but you don’t have to. The point is to leverage the time of vets online so that you can get some peace of mind, and maybe work out whether it’s critical to take your pet to a vet ASAP.
Is it a good service?
In August, we found we had a great reason to try VetChat as Daisy, our ten month old Golden Retriever, had been feeling a little out of sorts. She had only recently undergone a stay at the vet barely a month before from eating stones and plastic toys, a known problem from a dog breed that explores the world with their mouth.
Barely a month later, and she was feeling ill again, possibly following something else she ate.
Loading up VetChat, we found vets that were easy to talk to, allowing us to try a few simple things that the vet would normally do — look at Daisy’s tongue and lips, feel her sides — with suggestions and consultation notes provided afterwards.
It was enough over a period of hours to prompt seeing a vet, with the results being an eventually happy and healthy dog not long after.
Interestingly, while the regular vet did prescribe medication for Daisy, the VetChat online vet did not. That’s not out of kilter for the service, with a note on the membership page stating that “VetChat vets do not routinely prescribe your pet medication”.
Is VetChat Plus good value?
For the price of $25 per month or $259 per year, VetChat Plus seems like a clever way to get some peace of mind, though it’s clearly not a replacement for a proper vet appointment. Considering that vet visits in real life start from $100 per occurrence, it’s decent value, though it doesn’t really replace a real life appointment, either.
The service covers up to five pets with no age limit on either, and also arrives with a limited pet insurance plan, albeit with limited excess of $500 and a claims process that occurs after you’ve paid, rather than being gap-based.
Really, the insurance is a bit of an extra, with the main focus really on paying for a 24/7 telehealth service for animals.
Yay or nay?
It’s not quite as good as going to the vet, but this service isn’t really about that. VetChat Plus is more about gauging whether you need to do that in the first place.
A vet appointment takes time to make, while emergency vets can get costly quickly. VetChat Plus is a peace of mind pet service for folks who need just that. Much like puppy proofing the tech in your home, it could be one of those extras to make life that little bit easier.
Truthfully, your pet will probably still need a quick trip to the vet in the days after using VetChat Plus, but it could just help you make sense of things beforehand.
