Wondering how telehealth, compounded medications, and your patient’s healthcare needs fit together properly? Here’s a great example of a very common medical condition!

Senior cats and other chronic conditions are great cases for providing telehealth and tracking medical data with Anipanion, and improving medication compliance with PetScript. Consider the common scenario of a 15 year old cat with weight loss and increased thirst. These patients are often difficult to handle for both the client and veterinary team, get diseases that require daily medications, and they hide their symptoms.

1. When the client first contacts the clinic, have standard materials ready to send via an Anipanion chat. If the client reaches out by phone, ask them to download the app and send you a message so that you can send them back the information they need. In this instance, sending the client a standard “Geriatric cat diseases” handout, an estimate of an exam plus senior workup, and a history form to fill out via the Anipanion app will ensure the client is educated and saves time in the exam room. Since this was sent via chat, the client can easily ask questions without using the phone.
Tips:
– Send the client an automated welcome email directly from the Anipanion platform when they schedule an appointment. Tell the client while on the phone that need to download the app for further communication.
– Have a library of documents for your team to pull from in shared folders. Create written articles, mini videos, and other educational materials to help your clients understand their pet’s health needs.
– Asking the client to send the hospital a chat, and then being prompt about answering them back, helps solidify trust and good communication practices
-Ask the client to explore the activity and emotion tracking ability of the Anipanion Pet app. The pet parent can start to log this data to provide your doctors with detailed histories.

2. The day before the appointment, send helpful tips on getting their cat to the clinic. Remind them to give medications or withhold food, confirm their appointment time, and make sure they remember to bring in those outdoor cats!

3. The day of the appointment, keep an open chat with the client. The front desk can use this to check the client in and provide invoices; technicians can use this to gather histories and send educational materials or helpful links; the doctors can use this to provide written instructions and recommendations. At the end of the visit, you can close the chat or choose to leave it open to deliver lab results the next day. The entire clinic visit’s documents and details are now in one easy to find place in Anipanion and can be imported into the patient’s account in integrated PIMS.

4. Deliver laboratory results. Send your interpretation- via video file, audio file, document, or chat- attached with the results easily through chat. Questions can be handled via chat or jump into a video call. In many cases, the doctor can leave a personalized interpretation and a technician can handle the followup questions.
Tip: If the patient needs compounded medication, you can order directly through Anipanion’s PetScript portal.
– Ask the pet parent to track certain health parameters in the Anipanion Pet app, like thirst, urination, appetite, and energy levels. If the pet parent logs this information, we can find trends in the pet’s symptoms and catch problems earlier.

5. Order Compounded Medications through PetScript. Select the “PetScript” link, which will open the forms for you to order the medication in a new browser tab. Enter the patient information, prescriber information, and medication information. Feel free to run the options by the client while you are chatting with them- there are many flavors and types available!
Tips:
-Liquid marshmallow or tuna chewables will probably be a hit for bitter medications!
-Don’t forget about the medication management tool in the pet’s account in Anipanion

6. Provide a virtual recheck to extend time between in-person visits. Check in on medication compliance, ask the client to send videos of the cat to observe mentation, gait, respiratory rates, and in some cases CRTs and hydration levels can be generally observed. You can also use this time to teach the clients how to check CRTs and hydration levels, how to feel for a heart rate, and gather other information through a virtual exam.

Tip: Include the cost of this recheck into the cost of the original exam, lab results, or other services. You could also set a membership model for chronic cases that includes a number of virtual rechecks.

7. Continue to provide care with a balance of virtual and in-person. Keeping up a stream of good communication with the client and tracking health data via the Anipanion Pet app will help your clients stay more informed, feel more comfortable with their pet’s medical conditions, be more compliant with recommendations, and improve patient outcomes by catching problems earlier.
Tip: Ordering this pet’s medication through PetScript once monthly gets you ⅓ of the way to a free Anipanion subscription!