For emergency referral or information
01425 485615
01425 485615
Southern Counties Veterinary Services
Insurance
Pet insurance will usually cover the cost of treatments we provide, but some policies have limited cover and will not. You must check with your insurer to ensure that you have adequate cover.
Our normal procedure is for you to pay for the treatment and leave a claim form with us. It is important that you have completed the appropriate part of the form so that we can complete our section and send it in the post within five working days. We make no charge for this service.
We can arrange for payment to be made directly to us, but only if we have authorisation to do so by the insurance company. In these cases, you will need to contact your insurance company so that they can give us the information we need. We will ask you to pay any excess on your policy as a deposit ( whether this is a fixed amount or a percentage, in which case we will charge the percentage of the estimate you receive from us). We appreciate that specialist vet fees can be expensive and difficult to budget for so, unlike many other practices, we do not charge a fixed deposit or an administration fee.
Any amount owing to you on settlement of the claim by the insurance company will be reimbursed immediately.
Should an insurance company decide, for whatever reason, that cover will not be provided for a claim, unfortunately the responsibility for any outstanding amount must be taken by you, the person with whom they have a Contract. A telephone call from you to the insurance company to ensure that there is cover for your pet’s condition (even if there is no diagnosis at the time) is advised prior to consultation. Such a telephone conversation should encompass:
- Confirmation that your pet is still covered
- Confirmation that the condition is (still) covered. Some policies will offer a maximum level of cover per condition; some will only pay 12 months from the first signs of the condition; some only pay a certain amount per 12 months.
- Maximum cover, and how much of that has been “used up” by work done by the referring veterinary surgeon.
- Confirmation of the excess required to be paid when a claim is made. This may be a fixed amount or a percentage. It may be applied once per condition or once per year.
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Insurance companies tend to deal with serial claims in chronological order so should there be claims for work done by the referring veterinary surgeon prior to referral to SCVS, the claim for the previous work should be submitted as soon as possible to prevent delays on any subsequent claim.
Please bring your policy and a signed claim form to your consultation if you have arranged a direct claim, as we cannot proceed with treatment without one. We may need further signed claim forms from you if your pet is in our hospital for more than one week, or follow-up treatments are required.