Support clients with veterinary costs

Check if you’re eligible for help at one of our veterinary hospitals and through our Veterinary Care Fund.

No, all applications must be assessed for suitability against our guiding principles and be submitted by a participating veterinary practice.

Generally, a pet can receive support once in a 12 month period. If a client has multiple pets that require treatment you can apply for each pet once in a 12 month period.

Payment can only be made to the veterinary practice. You must then discount the award amount from the client’s invoice and send us a copy as part of the application process.

Anything the client can pay towards the total treatment costs, means that our fund will go further and we’ll be able to help more pets. But, there may be occasions where the funded amount covers the total treatment cost and the client has no balance to pay.  

Yes, you’ll assess each case against our guiding principles and, providing it meets these, and the owner is aware of any additional/ongoing costs not covered by the fund, then we’d encourage you to offer our Veterinary Care Fund support. Treatment must be completed either on the same date of your application submission or within one week following this date.

The decision on whether or not to apply for funding is held with your practice. We would encourage you to support your clients as much as possible if their case meets the funding criteria, but you should also assess the clients ability to pay the remainder of the bill or any ongoing fees. Euthanasia is also covered by the fund.

We have a limited budget each month so that we can offer funding throughout the year. This means funding may close temporarily if the allocated budget has been awarded for the month.

Together we can help more pets and owners if we keep treatments as cost effective as possible. Although the fund covers both diagnostics and treatment, we recommend using how a patient responds to treatment as a way to help diagnose where possible.

Only carry out diagnostics that will directly affect the treatment choices and select treatment that has the best chance of being effective.

In recent years, the number of species kept as pets in the UK has dramatically increased, along with the knowledge and skills required to keep them. Therefore, our funding is only available for pets commonly domesticated in the British Isles, such as cats, dogs, rabbits, rats, mice, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, ferrets, degus, chinchillas and small birds, such as budgies.
 

Due to limited funding, we’re only able to use the fund to support owned, domestic, companion animals. Exotics, farm animals, wildlife, stray or abandoned pets are not covered by the fund.

When you’ve identified a suitable case, you’ll need to submit your application through our processing website. If you’re new to the site, you’ll need to create a practice account, then you’ll be able to see and track all your applications in one place.

Once you’ve submitted your application, we’ll review it within two working days. If provisionally approved, we’ll email you with your unique PO number for that case.

Your purchase order number is unique to each individual application and cannot be transferred to another case or practice.

If our processing team have reviewed your application and given a provisional award offer, your account will move to ‘pending documentation submission’ status. When you open your application, you’ll be asked if you’d like to proceed with your application – there will be an option to withdraw your application here.

Withdrawing, means your application will automatically be closed off and the reserved funding amount will be reallocated to another pet needing support.

You’ll need to log onto your account (hosted by Survey Monkey Apply) and upload documentation for:

• clinical history (relating to the treatment you’ve applied for funding for)
• the client invoice (for the full treatment cost, showing the deduction made for the funded amount)
• an invoice to Blue Cross – for the agreed funding amount. This must contain:

-    the date
-    the unique PO number associated with that case
-    the total funding amount
-    a breakdown of the VAT amount
-    be on headed paper
-    display your practice VAT registration number
-    invoice made out to Blue Cross, Shilton Road, Burford, OX18 4PF

Our payment terms are 30 days from the date of the invoice. We make two payment runs per month.

As long as you have uploaded all the relevant documents within two weeks of the treatment date, we will be able to help, if you’re unable to confirm the amount covered by the insurance by the cut off date we will be unable to allocate funding as the application will be automatically closed after this time and the funds will be allocated to another case.

Once you’ve submitted your application, we’ll email you within two working days to let you know if funding has been provisionally allocated for your case. As long as you upload all the relevant documents within two weeks of the treatment date, payment will be made by BACS within 30 days of receipt of your invoice to us.

Once you’ve set up your account in our application processing platform (hosted by Survey Monkey Apply), you’ll be able to submit multiple applications, track and manage all your applications in one place.

All sites can register. Each site will need create an account via our processing platform.

No, there is no cost to the practice to be part of the scheme, although we’d be really grateful if you could think about us for any fundraising activities to help us support more pets and people in the future.

If clients contact us in relation to the Veterinary Care Fund, we will notify them if their practice is part of the scheme and advise them to contact them directly. It is the practice’s decision, upon a vet assessing their case against our guiding principles, whether or not they have a suitable case to apply for funding.

Log in to your account, you’ll be able to see all of your submitted applications and their current status within the processing stages. If you have any problems please call or email us.