Each year the VHMA asks practices about fee increases for the year; either those planned or already implemented. As with past years, the majority of the 180 practices participating in this survey, 53%, said yes to the question: “Have you or will you raise your professional service fees in 2019?” Twenty-seven percent in 2019, said they would be increasing fees on only non-shopped services compared to 2018.
When asked the average amount of increase for shopped services responses were fairly spread out amongst the categories with about 41% of the hospitals saying the average increase on shopped services would be 3% and a surprising 32% increasing shopped fees by 5% or more.
Hospitals planned on increasing the fees on non-shopped services by a greater amount, the majority of hospitals said their non-shopped service increase would be between 4-6% with about 35% of hospitals increasing these fees just 1-3%.
When asked what factors or strategies were considered in deciding how much to increase either the shopped or non-shopped services in the practice. The most commonly mentioned factors or strategies for shopped services included:
- Overall cost of doing business and anticipated future cost increases
- Increases in practice costs for a particular product or service
- What other practices are charging
- Inflation
- Time since the last increase
- Location and area standards
- Demographics of local pet owners
- Fee references such as AAHA, WMP
- Gut instinct
The most commonly mentioned factors or strategies for non-shopped services included all of those used in pricing shopped services as well as:
- Frequency service is utilized by pet owners
- Anticipated downward turn in economy
- Client perception of value
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