No @LSMarnell
They should find a vet whose services match their needs rather than expect a vet to change his/her business model to suit that individual client. I don’t go into McDonald’s and demand they serve vegan smoothies. If I want vegan smoothies I go find someone who sells them.
Uhhh yeah your vet is wrong or maybe you misheard him lol
Fewer are choosing equine practice, yes, but idk where he got this number from. It’s exaggerated to the point of being doomsday-saying.
OP I really feel for you. Like Texarkana, this is a fear of mine — there have been times where my horses hurt themselves so catastrophically they couldn’t even be loaded to go anywhere. Imagining what it would have been like without a vet coming to them has my stomach twisting.
The good thing is it is not personal at all. There’s legitimate reasons to do this business model although it doesn’t work for all clients. Is your vet completely eliminating it across all vets in her practice, or is it just her? My lameness vet is now only doing truck in diagnostics — he just has so much more at his disposal in house… but he also hired not one but two vets to replace his absence out in the field.
Shop around. Ask your vet for recommendations too. Any reasonable person can understand why this model might not work for everyone.
I agree that it is a business and should be treated like a business. No, clients don’t get to demand services or dictate the business model.
But I also agree with @walkinthewalk that given the nature and size of horses, farm calls should not be considered a dispensable luxury service. No, it’s not necessarily the vet’s responsibility to “hire” a second vet. But the equine community, vets and horse owners alike, need to figure out how we can maintain medical services for our animals. Private practices saying, “nope, not doing it anymore,” while completely justified, is not going to fly in the long run. We are close to finding ourselves in a veterinary crisis on multiple levels, and that jeopardizes the health and welfare of all equines.
Maybe we need state subsidies. Maybe equine medicine will need to adopt an NP/PA type model where techs can work independently under a state vet’s supervision and protocol. But we are going to need to do something and do it soon.
My first thought is that the only responsibility the solo private practitioner has to her existing client base regarding the suspension of field services is some notice, if possible. This is with the caveat that she is reasonably able to do so, given that her change to hospital-based practice might be due to physical or other personal limitations that may not give her or her clients that luxury. But the more I thought about it, the less I even feel like this would actually be a courtesy. Clients will bombard her with complaints and pressure to continue field service to them, which she has already decided she cannot or will not do, and then otherwise will overwhelm her ambulatory schedule trying to schedule everything under the sun for all their horses and client horses etc before she suspends field service. If she wasn’t ready to toss the truck keys out the window before such an announcement, then she sure will be totally overwhelmed now and less able to face the last 30-60-90 pr whatever notice period she might provide as a courtesy. Some courtesy that is to anyone? Because clients will continue to be angry with her the entire time she continues and whatever stresses that have forced her decision to discontinue field services will only be directly reinforced. Since she has already made the decision, I wouldn’t blame her for suspending field service immediately.
Horses are LUXURY. No veterinarian owes horse owners anything at all, much less a business model that is not profitable. or less profitable, or less personally suitable for them for any reason. Who wouldn’t want to work in a comfortable hospital setting and let horses come to them, get more of them done in a day, and instead of sitting in traffic and spending more time driving than practicing veterinary medicine or making money. Sucks for horse owners that are used to farm visits. But it is what is.
If it takes you an hour to travel, it takes the vet a similar time. So out of a working day, the vet sees how many paying customers? And what vet doesn’t work very long hours? As a solo Practioner, that’s not much income for a ludicrous amount of work.
The home visit is a lovely convenience for the customer but most of them will probably be complaining about the vet being late, the treatment costing too much, that they are unable to get a visit whenever they want, that they disagree with the diagnosis and want a second opinion from someone who is actually competent!! …
I can totally see why housecalls haven’t been done by doctors for about the past 40 years and, IMO, vets have been too slow to follow.
Believe me when I say I agree with you about the vet’s situation. I will be among the first to stand up for vets. I walked away from vet school in my 20s for these reasons.
But I don’t think access to veterinary medicine should be considered a luxury.
In small animal medicine, it makes sense to adhere to a hospital-only model. The logistics of transporting cats and dogs are basically the same as transporting people.
But horses and other livestock have different challenges because of their size and temperaments. Hospital-only for large animal medicine is unrealistic and will leave a significant number of animals without access. If we are going to enact state and local laws about animal welfare, then we need to maintain access to veterinarians, which includes mobile service.
This responsibility doesn’t fall on the shoulders of any single vet. Nor does it dictate what type of business a vet can or can’t run. It’s a bigger conversation that involves the entire animal owning community. Our current expectations for large animal vets are unrealistic. So what changes can we make to the system to ensure everyone has reasonable access to veterinarians?
Maybe jack the price of the farm call to make it worth their time, and to discourage it unless absolutely necessary?
Or find a vet who can come to you? An obvious and simple answer, really.
This, totally this!
I admit that I am curious what @LCDR is paying for a farm call fee right now.
I am about an hour from my horse vet and my farm call fee is just under $100, before they do anything else, my bill is already $100. Worth it to have a good vet service come to me, so far from their clinic. Think about it, that is $50/hour for their time driving. Not a huge sum of money for them.
Have you ever been in a situation where you can’t find a vet to come to you?
It’s not fun.
Not everywhere has an abundance of options. Best laid transportation plans to get to the closest hospital (which may not be close at all) can fall through surprisingly easily.
Fortunately this doesn’t seem to be a trend in my area (at least not yet!) While there are some vets who ask that you come to them for more advanced diagnostics or treatment, most do just about anything in the field. In fact most horse vets don’t have the facilities to house and treat multiple horses at their office.
I still have a choice of multiple mobile vets. They also have a system to cover for each other. I think my area has a lot to do with this. We are fairly densely populated with plenty of horses so routine calls can be combined to avoid long drives for one horse. This means you may have to wait a few days for a non-urgent lameness until the vet is in your area but they will come! Also a large number of clients do not have trailers on their own. And many vets now travel with an assistant who also drives, letting the vet take calls, make notes or just relax. Emergency calls that involve a trip just for you are quite expensive but every non-specialist horse vet I know of does them and most have referral arrangements if they can’t come out. May it never change!
I admit, I have not been in this situation. I intentionally use the slightly more expensive practice that has lots of vets. I also use them for all routine care so they not only know my animals but because routine care keeps the doors open and pays bills.
None of this makes it the responsibility of this vet to provide a service they do not want to provide. Change the story from what it is to this vet is moving out of the area. Clients can not demand the vet not move. That is when the horse owner has to decide what they want to do. Buy a trailer? Make an arrangement with someone who has a trailer? Stop owning horses because there is a risk of not being able to provide proper vet care? Demanding the vet provide the service they want is not on the list and will not draw another vet in, because who wants clients like that?
I am 100% in agreement with you that clients can’t “demand” anything of their vets.
But not everywhere has an expensive, fancy practice with multiple vets. Those are only viable in communities with large numbers of expensive horses and owners willing to pay to fund the overhead.
Not everyone can justify the cost of a trailer and tow vehicle. Even if you have one, you can’t guarantee you will have access to it 100% of the time. Like, my trailer is due for its annual maintenance right now— my local shop is slow and I’ll be without it for several days at least. There aren’t other options for service in a reasonable drive.
Transportation arrangements can fall through. People go out of town, trailers are already in use elsewhere, etc.
It’s easy to say “well if you don’t have a vet don’t own horses,” but that’s not really a solution, either. In your example of the vet moving out of town and leaving you in a lurch- what is a horse owner supposed to do? Move? Sell their horses out of the area? Shoot their animals? Not to mention that less horses will only exacerbate the problem.
Our vets deserve better than the current expectations of practice. It’s unsustainable.
I think funding education of equine vets would be one relatively easy and affordable action. I don’t know if anyone is doing this. I think if a large number of horse owners were contributing reasonable amounts of money to scholarship programs so equine vets could have their student loans eliminated, we could attract and retain more. It wouldn’t fix the logistics and lifestyle demands, but at least it would reduce financial stress.
So very true.
While we didn’t buy our current place because it’s ten minutes up the road from my preferred vet clinic, the proximity to the vet is a huge relief.
Some areas have very limited options for vet service and in those areas one gets what vet one can get. But if you, general you, have choices between vet practices, I would encourage the general you to select a practice with multiple vets on staff.
Having an after hours emergency when your vet is on vacation sucks. Many vets decline emergency services for individuals that aren’t existing clients.
This is a great idea! It seems to me that it fits all the models of rural practice, underserved population practice, lower barrier to entering the equine health professionals field, etc. Whom do we call to ask for this to be explored at the professional/official level?
I have decided to switch back to an equine practice with multiple equine vets located just 5 miles up the road from me. I used them for 20 years prior to going with my solo practitioner because I liked having continuity of care for my horses. The multi-vet practice has 2 owner partners and frequent turnover of 4 or 5 associates due in part to their strong non-compete contracts. The drawback is that you never know in advance which vet will show up and whether she knows you and your horses and what her training and experience is, but on the positive side there is someone always on tap for emergencies.
Now that I have made the decision to switch and scheduled my horses next farm call for their coggins and vaccines I am both disappointed and relieved, if that makes sense.
Best of luck!
Perhaps their current model will allow you to request a particular vet? I do that with my vet practice. For after hour emergencies one uses whichever vet is on call but for regularly scheduled appointments we can get on a particular vet’s schedule
One proposal to fund equine veterinary medicine:
If AQHA and the Jockey Club added a $25 fee to their registrations to put into an equine medicine scholarship fund, we would raise over $2.5M a year to put towards reducing the financial burden on equine vets. And that’s just tapping into one sector of the industry. I know we all hate rising costs and being nickeled and dimed, but imagine if every horse organization could allocate a small portion of membership fees to the cause. The average vet graduates with $150k or more in student loan debt, yet we could graduate dozens of equine vets a year debt free if we pooled our resources. Then do something like request a 5 year commitment to the field of equine practice in return.
Thanking vets for their services instead of griping about the bill might help too.
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