ChatGPT gave them a price. Now what?

It’s 11:40 on a Tuesday and you’re running ten minutes behind. Not horrendously so, but enough to make you careful that the minutes don’t escalate further. As you return to exam room 2, Mrs Mackenzie is holding her phone up like a boarding pass. “I looked it up,” she says. “It says online this should be about half that.”

You’ve had this conversation more frequently of late. Some of those went beautifully. A couple still replay on the drive home, the ones where you heard yourself getting brisk, or explaining the price of the X-ray machine to someone who was really asking whether her dog was going to be okay.

Because that’s usually the real question. Behind “how much?” sits a quieter one: can I trust you, and can I afford to look after him the way I want to? She’s frightened. So, a little, are you, because nobody went into this work to be the person who says the number.

You already know how to do this. The difference between the good days and the drive-home days comes down to a handful of small moves, and every one of them can be learned. Here’s where to start…

Connect With Your Next Practice

Where did you see that?

Numbers arrive before clients do now. A quick search in the car park. A chatbot answer at midnight. A cousin’s post about what she paid two states away. A forum thread about a different dog with a different problem in a different year.

Here’s the twist. In the US, very few practice websites show prices at all, so the figure on that phone was often made somewhere that has never met this pet. In the UK, new rules require practices to publish price lists, so clients there will soon arrive with your own numbers, and the questions are likely to shift to what’s included. Either way, people walk in primed.

And yes, AI is in the room with you. Owners are asking it about symptoms, food and behaviour, sometimes several times a week. The good news hiding in the same surveys: when the chatbot and the vet disagree, far more owners side with the vet. You start this conversation with more trust than it feels like at 11:40.

Your tool is the curious question.

“Where did you see that?” Ask it the way you’d ask about a symptom, because you want the history. Half the time the answer solves the puzzle by itself: a smaller dog, a simpler procedure, a clinic in another country, a price from before the pandemic.

Start here: Confidently know your practice’s price for the ten things clients ask about first, and everything that’s included. When your number is top of mind, theirs stops feeling like an ambush.

Start with the happy ending

We’re trained to describe the method. CBC, chem panel, two views, sedation. To the person holding the lead, that sounds like a shopping list with a total at the bottom.

A team of researchers in Ontario once filmed hundreds of real consults to see how vets talk about money. When a price came up, it usually arrived as the price of the service or the vet’s time. It rarely arrived attached to what the care would do for the pet. Their own example of getting it right was a dental: it could cost up to $1,000, and afterwards the pet would be able to eat again and would no longer be in pain. You could say that to anyone in any waiting room and they’d understand it in a heartbeat.

Owners can’t weigh a chem panel. They can weigh a dog who eats his breakfast again, sleeps through the night, or comes home by the weekend.

Your tool is the happy ending first.

Lead with what the owner gets, then the method in one breath, then the price. “This will tell us why she’s gone off her food, so we can get her eating again. It’s some bloodwork and an X-ray, and it comes to $480.” The medical detail is still there for anyone who asks, and plenty will, once they know where you’re heading.

This works just as well at the front desk, on a callback, or when a nurse or tech walks a client through the estimate. Whoever says the number gets to say the happy ending first.

Start here: For your next three estimates, say the outcome before you say a single test name or amount.

Ask about the budget first

Ask a room of vets whether they give clients options and every hand goes up. Ask the owners who said no to care because of cost, and many will tell you nobody offered them a cheaper plan.

Researchers asked both groups that question recently, and both groups may well be telling the truth. Part of the gap looks like timing. Only a small share of vets ask about money worries before they recommend anything. The rest wait until the plan is on the table, or until the client raises the cost or says no. By then she’s been doing sums in her head through your whole explanation of plan A. When plan B finally comes, she hears it as a consolation prize, if she hears it at all.

Your tool is the budget question, asked early.

“Before I walk you through the options, is there a budget you’d like me to keep in mind?” You haven’t promised to go cheaper. You’ve given both of you permission to talk about money like two adults who want the same thing for this animal.

Some clients will name a figure. Some will say “whatever he needs.” Either way you now know which conversation you’re having, before you’ve spent five minutes on the wrong one.

Start here: Use the budget question in every non-routine consult for one week and notice what happens to the rest of the conversation.

Open the door to Dr Google

Here’s something clients rarely admit: plenty of them have done their homework and decided not to mention it. Studies of human patients found people often keep their research to themselves and ask pointed questions instead, because they don’t want to seem difficult. When they did share it and the doctor seemed threatened, the visit often went badly. When it was welcomed, the relationship often got stronger.

Vets have mixed feelings about this, and fair enough. One survey of UK vets caught both sides in two lines:

“Online misinformation is a major cause of stress and frustration to myself & colleagues.”

“Dr Google is sometimes a very useful tool in supporting my advice.”

Both can be true on the same Tuesday. What decides it is often the next thing you say.

The chatbots have also raised the bar for how kind a written answer sounds. In one study, people compared a vet’s replies to pet owners with ChatGPT’s replies to the same questions, and the chatbot came across as far more caring. Nobody checked whether its answers were right. The researchers pointed to simple habits behind the warmth, among them a clear structure, naming the owner’s worry, and reassuring words. In their words, these are “teachable communication skills rather than capabilities unique to AI.”

Your tool is the open door.

“Have you had a chance to read anything about this?” Said kindly, it turns hidden research into a shared starting point, and it tells the client you’re comfortable with what they found.

Start here: Next time you reply to a client by email or text, borrow the habits the chatbot gets right. Open by naming what they’re worried about: “I know you’re worried this could be something serious.” Set out the plan in two or three short lines. Then finish with exactly what happens next and when: “We’ll call you with the results by 4pm.”

Keep a plan B in your pocket

“I don’t have time for a money conversation.” It feels true at 11:40 on a Tuesday. When researchers timed real conversations in human medicine about ways to save patients money, they took about a minute, and the saving often left the care plan exactly as it was.

The Ontario researchers borrowed three kinds of phrase from human medicine that help. Adapted for the clinic, they sound like this:

“Are you worried about the cost of this?”
“Let’s see what we can find together.”
“I wish there were a less expensive option that was just as safe.”

Leave out the one that’s always tempting: blaming head office, the insurer or the economy. It lets off steam and leaves the client exactly where they were.

The bigger hurdle often lives inside our own heads. Vets in Ontario who took a workshop on spectrum of care (offering a range of medically sound options at different costs) said fear held them back from offering cheaper plans. Fear of a complaint, of the regulator, of a colleague reading the notes years later. Often it was fear of something that had never happened to them. As one vet put it, “We judge ourselves and each other. It’s not just the public.”

What eased it was having the alternative worked out in advance. “I really appreciated the resources that said, ‘Well, if you can’t do this, how about protocol B?'”

Your tool is plan B in your pocket.

Start here: Write down a sound plan B for the five cases where you hear “how much?” over and over at your clinic. Then run them past a senior colleague over coffee.

Pick a team that has your back

Nobody leaves school ready for this. A researcher in Wales followed a group of new UK vets through their first two and a half years in practice. Plenty were shocked by the fees, and some quietly “forgot” to charge for things. Over time, sometimes with a mentor’s help, many learned to value their own time.

“But now, I’m just like, ‘Yes, I’m going to charge you because that’s 15 minutes of my time trying to look through the slides and then call you back.'”

Another summed up a hard truth: “People are going to complain about money, whether you charge them correctly or not.” Undercharging, the study found, made things harder for colleagues further down the line.

The people around you shape how these conversations go. In some practices, one person handles every tricky estimate and everyone else crosses their fingers. In others, the whole team practises the words, backs each other up, and nobody gets left alone with a crying client and a calculator. The Ontario vets named a supportive team as one of the things that helped them offer plan B.

Your tool here is asking the right questions at your interview.

Start here: Next time you’re interviewing for a new job, ask three things. How does the team handle estimates? Who coaches new starters on cost conversations? And how much room will I have to offer options?

Closing thoughts

Back in exam room 2, you pull up a stool so you’re at eye level with Mrs Mackenzie and ask, “Where did you see that?” You listen to the answer. Then you tell her what you want for her dog before you mention a single test: to find out what’s going on and get him back to his old self. “Before I go through the options,” you say, “is there a budget you’d like me to keep in mind?”

She lets out a breath, and the phone goes face down on the table. She’s stopped comparing numbers. “What would you do,” she asks, “if he were yours?”

That’s what the price conversation is for. Trust grows when owners understand what care costs and can see the expertise behind it, and you build both of those one consult at a time. Get comfortable here and you protect something that has to last a whole career: the part of you that came into this work for the animals and still enjoys the people attached to them.

This week, pick one phrase from above and use it for five shifts in a row. On the fifth, take two minutes to notice whether those conversations felt any different. If they did, add a second one next week.

Here’s how it can sound when it all comes together.

Scenario: the bloodwork conversation

An illustrative scenario, not a real case.

Max is a six-year-old Labrador who has been off his food for two days and was sick this morning. His exam is reassuring: he’s bright, well hydrated and his tummy isn’t sore. But he isn’t himself. Jo has her phone out before Dr Lee has finished writing up the notes.

“I asked ChatGPT,” she says, a little embarrassed. “It said tests for this should cost about $200.”

“I’m glad you looked,” says Dr Lee. “Do you know where it got that number from?”

Jo scrolls. “Somewhere in another state, I think.”

“That makes sense. Prices vary a lot. Can I ask what you’re worried about right now?”

“That it’s something serious. And that I can’t afford it.”

“Both completely fair. Before I go through options, is there a budget you’d like me to keep in mind?”

Jo names a figure, smaller than she wants it to be.

“Thank you. That helps. Here’s what I’d love to do. I want to find out why Max has stopped eating, so we can get him back to his normal greedy self. Labradors are famous for eating things they shouldn’t, so I’d like to check for that too. That’s bloodwork and an X-ray today, and it comes to $480.” Jo glances down.

“I wish the X-ray cost less,” says Dr Lee. “So here’s another sound option. We start with the bloodwork today, which tells us a lot about what’s going on inside. You keep a close eye on him at home, and if he still isn’t eating tomorrow, we do the X-ray then. Let’s write both options down so you can see them side by side.”

At the desk, Bev gives Max a chest rub and hands Jo a written estimate with both plans on it.

“Call us if he’s still off his food tomorrow,” says Dr Lee. “And call us straight away tonight if he’s sick again or seems sore or flat. We’ll take it from there together.”

Jo walks out with a plan she chose herself, and Max walks out with his tail still wagging.

What the research shows

Clients and vets are feeling the squeeze from both sides:

• 81% of US vets say clients are more cost-sensitive than a year ago, and diagnostics are the first thing declined. (Brakke Consulting survey, reported by AVMA, 2026)
• 81% of US vets say they offer another plan when cost gets in the way, yet 73% of owners who declined care over cost say they weren’t offered a lower-priced option. (PetSmart Charities and Gallup, 2025 and 2026)
• Only about 1 in 7 vet conversations about price linked it to what the care would do for the pet’s future. (University of Guelph video study, 2022)
• 43% of US owners have used AI tools for pet health or nutrition questions, yet 64% side with their vet when the advice clashes. (Talker Research survey for Darwin’s pet food, 2026)
• In human medicine, talking through ways to save patients money took a median of 68 seconds. (Duke University, 2016)

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