The discount given to a plan that stopped paying
Your pet health plan covers vaccinations, flea and worm treatment and a discount on other work. Clients pay monthly by Direct Debit, collected by a plan provider or your own payment service. At the desk, the receptionist sees a plan flag on the patient record and applies the discount.
What nobody sees is that the Direct Debit failed three months ago. The client changed banks, or cancelled, or the card expired. The flag is still on the record. The discount is still given. The flea treatment is still handed over each month.
Two systems that do not talk
The plan payments live in one place: a plan provider's portal, GoCardless, Stripe or a bank report. Entitlement lives in another: the practice management system, where a plan membership was set up when the client joined.
When a payment fails, the payment system knows. It may even send an email. But the email goes to a shared inbox, and nobody updates the patient record. The practice management system carries on as if nothing had changed.
Plans also have practice-specific rules: a grace period, a number of failed collections before suspension, what happens to treatment already given. Those rules are applied by whoever notices, which in practice means rarely.
What unchased failures cost
| Gap | Effect |
|---|---|
| Discounts on lapsed plans | Work and products given below price |
| Plan items handed out | Monthly treatments supplied without payment |
| Late discovery | An awkward conversation about months of arrears |
| No renewal contact | Clients who would have fixed a card simply drift away |
| Plan reporting | You cannot trust how many members you really have |
Linking plan payments to the patient record
- Payment data from your plan provider or payment service, through its API, webhook or daily report. GoCardless and Stripe both provide payment events we can read. Plan providers vary, and we check yours.
- Member matching between payment records and patients in your practice management system.
- Status rules you agree: how many failed payments, how many days of grace, and what status the plan moves to.
- Record updates in the practice management system where it allows, so the plan flag changes and the desk sees it at checkout. Where it does not, a daily list for reception to update.
- Client contact. A polite message with a link to update payment details, in wording you approve, sent as soon as a payment fails rather than months later.
- A plan dashboard showing active, in grace, suspended and cancelled members, with monthly movement.
Plans that stay in step with payments
A failed payment triggers a message to the client the same week. Many update their details straight away. Those who do not are flagged at the desk before the next discount is given, so the conversation happens with the right information and without surprise.
You also get an honest membership count, which matters when you are deciding what to include in next year's plan or how to price it.
Is your health plan leaking?
- Plan status in your PMS is updated by hand, if at all
- Failed Direct Debit emails land in an inbox nobody owns
- You have found clients on discounts months after they stopped paying
- You are not sure how many plan members are currently paying
- Clients with expired cards are not contacted