Vet Eliminating Farm Calls

[Arelle]

I definitely think it’s a trend.

I’m in this weird no-man’s land of good vet practices. I have two 45 minutes east that are phenomenal and another 35 minutes west that I love. However, neither offer mobile services outside of a 30 minute radius.

I had to haul out for my last two emergencies. One was a dystocia birth at 3 AM. Lost the mare and foal. The other was when my filly fileted open her groin this February. I beat her with a whip onto the trailer; it was not my ideal choice, but I didn’t have an option. She spent three weeks in ICU and somehow survived and is now back under saddle.

I’m in North Texas - I think 99% of matters can be solved via a haul in. Even colics - if it’s bad enough to euthanize or require surgery, they’re going to have to be hauled in anyway. It’s why I beat my mare onto the trailer - her organs were about to fall out and it would not have been able to be handled at home. So I get it. Vets can see more clients, and anything serious enough to warrant an emergency is probably better treated at the clinic anyway.

I just don’t know how to handle things like broken legs, or veterinary emergencies where a trailer ride isn’t an option and the outcome isn’t going to be good. I would hope more practices would at least consider having a mobile unit specifically for cases where hauling in simply is not an option.

[candyappy]

@TheJenners

Yes they may love animals but they need to make money to pay bills, and often don’t get paid by dirtbag clients or wind up paying for treatment out of their own pocket.

I can bet that every vet knows who those clients are in the practice( or staff does). The fact is that it is easier to not service those clients and to continue to offer needed services to prompt paying customers. Why should all suffer because of a few?

[Alex_and_Bodie_s_Mom]

@LCDR

Even more worrisome, even for those of us with trucks, trailers, and usually loadable horses, is lack of available emergency care and treatment. Once the sick or injured horse is on a trailer, it helps nothing if you then have nowhere to go.

Exactly.

I love my vets - they are always there and I’ve never had them refuse any kind of emergency call. One of them left a wedding to come put down my colicking mare. I will forever be grateful to him for that.

But if it wasn’t for my vet’s clinic, I really have no viable options in my area for horse care. Most of the other practices are small animal only, or haul-in only. While I have a truck and trailer, when your horse is going down to roll every five minutes and it takes an act of God to get on her feet again, how far are you going to haul her? One clinic is an hour away; the other, OSU, is about an hour and 45 minutes. The small animal vets won’t do emergency calls and won’t handle horses at all.

Their current clinic is also not safe to haul into. There is no barn, only an open parking lot next to a rather busy two-lane road. Most don’t haul in anymore; you used to see trailers with cattle and pigs and horses in them all the time there, but it was simply too difficult to work with them in the trailers. Now, they’re building a brand-clinic with a lovely Morton building barn to work livestock and hopefully have a few stalls for cases that need more care. We should be able to pull through, or back right up to it, and never have to risk animals getting loose. I am sure that will cut down on some of their farm calls. However, they’re clear that they’re not giving up farm calls, especially not for emergencies.

[js]

Where we currently live there is a clinic that had two vets but now it’s just one vet. To make make finances work she services the big race horse barns; which I totally get but that leaves the backyard owner often without a vet available even if we haul in and not always available emergencies. The flip side of that is you have to be a client in good standing to get farm calls. A little bit hard when they aren’t always available. It has made us reconsider living here. I don’t want to be in an area again with a lack of equine or even large animal vets.

Maybe we or COTH should post a sticker above in this forum that states States/Cities/Towns that have good equine vets, since it is hard to find them. I know my vet has said they are everywhere in TX but they never have been in the few places we’ve lived. Have I know it might have had a little influence on where we chose to live.

[sorrelfilly721]

We have had one vet retire and the other moved. Right now in my area, it’s a two day wait if you have an emergency.

[B_and_B]

I try not to think too hard about this…but I’m thinking back. My beloved thoroughbred went down some five years ago with a fatal colic. There would have been no getting this horse on a trailer. Even if we had one available. I called my vet, my vet for 30 years…he couldn’t come. He could refer me to another vet. Who was able to come. And euthanized my horse, a few hours of agony spared I hope.
I never, ever thought that network of vets wasn’t there. Yes, the bill was high. But, that didn’t matter. I think the bill was quite entirely reasonable.
But…now my old vet has retired, so I’m using the vet that came out that day…but now I wonder? What is his backup? Short answer, there is no one.
What is the backup for so many people in so many of these trades? There is no backup for my vet, there is no backup for my friend’s plumber (I have a friend camping out for the night, his plumbing went Weee! and no plumbers can come till…?), the tree companies are booked until 2022. My carpenter is scheduling next summer…and circling back to health, my Obgyn is also scheduling next summer. Something is broken.

[LCDR]

What I fail to understand is veterinarians with busy practices who try to dissuade new practitioners from coming to their locations. It seems almost purely driven by greed plus ego; “I may have a long waiting list for new clients, but by God no one is going to come here and take those away from me.” Ideally, these over-busy individuals should be referring clients to the new vet, and be thankful for having a new person to participate in emergency coverage.

If an established vet hires a new graduate into their practice, there is often a very strong and aggressively laid out “restrictive covenant” in the contract so the new grad cannot stay in the area if he or she leaves the practice. And worse, in my opinion, are practitioners who employ new grads by dangling the carrot of future partnership, but haven’t ever actually made any of these folks a partner, so they either stay on as low-paid labor, or elect to leave in frustration for another town or state.

[Bebe_Falcon1]

I’m learning so much about veterinary practice in this thread, which is a good thing. I imagine a lot of pet/horse owners have no concept as to the reality that these professionals face, from the debt they incur to the kinds of clients they endure. When one of my vets started asking for a credit card number to keep on file, it blew my mind as I couldn’t imagine someone actually REFUSING TO PAY for veterinary services rendered. The audacity!

We had an equine vet who also boarded at a barn I was at, who within the last two years or so, left for small animal practice. For all of the reasons already stated above.

The larger vet practice that was serving that same barn announced in the spring that they were going to “refocus and restructure” so that they were no longer offering routine herd health, or urgent and emergency care.

I’m grateful we moved barns when we did, as it’s put me within a 7.5km radius of the practice I’ve used on-and-off over the years, as I’ve moved in and out of the area. I also live within 2km of a well-known veterinary college that’s known for producing a lot of large animal vets, which I think - after reading through this thread and reflecting on my own recent experiences - is the only thing keeping me from developing anxiety over the prospect of a vet shortage in the near future because all signs are pointing in that direction, it seems.

[Cammie]

@Horse_Rider

Uh… Just spotted this. Guys, it is nearly impossible to get new vets into practices right now. The demand is higher than the supply in most areas. This has been going on for years and COVID has made it even worse. I literally got an offer in the mail the other day. They promised me the moon and the stars if I’d at least do an interview.

Please be nice to your vet. I just saw it said very well today: “This pandemic took everything from us except for work.” The number of vets I see on my private vet forum who are talking about leaving the business and doing anything else is terrifying and I don’t blame a single one of them.

The small animal clinics in my area are facing this problem. It’s next to impossible to get an appointment within 2 weeks with any of the clinics close to me. The one practice normally has at least 6 vets on staff and is now down to two. The sole practitioner nearby is massively overbooked and it takes several phone calls over a week to finally get a call back to discuss test results or concerns. I have at least 2 dozen clinics within 10 miles of my home and it’s been impossible to consistently go to one practice when you can’t get appointments and have to try elsewhere. I like to have long-term care with one vet or at least one clinic for my personal animals but haven’t had any choice but to hop-scotch with one of my cats this past year when he had a mystery ailment that was defying diagnosis and I couldn’t get follow-up appointments for him.

I’ve been fostering dogs for the past 6 months that arrive with medical issues and it’s been extremely difficult to get them in to see anyone for treatment. A lot of the clinics aren’t accepting new patients either. It’s getting to the point where clients are being referred to the emergency clinics for anything beyond routine care unless you luck into a cancelled appointment.

[AKB]

Many equine practices are understaffed now, and can’t find vets to hire. It is physically and mentally hard to work from 8am to 7pm every day and then do emergency calls at night.

[LCDR]

So what’s the solution?

Fund more vet schools, fund existing vet schools for larger class sizes, allow vet tech practitioners similar to nurse practitioners in medicine, facilitate US licensure for foreign-educated veterinarians, allow horse owners to purchase and use what are now Rx-only medications, de-emphasize GPA and place higher value on work experience in veterinary practice settings for vet school applicants, public relations campaigns to raise the status of veterinarians among the public, or?

We all agree there is both a shortage of veterinarian bodies, and also a maldistribution of those overworked, under-rewarded existing bodies, right? We’d all like to have a word-class veterinary practice near us, with a huge staff, and vets available to us on-call 24/7/365, but that just isn’t possible. But for most of us horse owners it could be better.

[Texarkana]

@LCDR

So what’s the solution?

Fund more vet schools, fund existing vet schools for larger class sizes, allow vet tech practitioners similar to nurse practitioners in medicine, facilitate US licensure for foreign-educated veterinarians, allow horse owners to purchase and use what are now Rx-only medications, de-emphasize GPA and place higher value on work experience in veterinary practice settings for vet school applicants, public relations campaigns to raise the status of veterinarians among the public, or?

I don’t think we need more vet schools, but we do need more funding to reduce the tuition burden.

I think we need to make expectations of large animal veterinarians compatible with the 21st century. The expectation of the one man hometown vet who works out of his truck and gives his clients a break on the bill doesn’t work when you graduate $200k in debt and the cost of all the bells and whistles you need are through the roof.

I think either the government or a major corporation is going to have to step in and “save” large animal medicine by paying vets a salary and giving them some semblance of work/life balance in line with small animal vets and doctors. Because vet schools admit tons of eager large animal vets every year, yet they quickly realize before or shortly after graduation that the lifestyle is unsustainable in today’s world.

I said this up thread, but I think an NP/PA model could be a viable bandaid solution. But that would likely require a lot of regulatory changes that I don’t think anyone has interest in pushing through.

[BrendaJane]

I think there has to be a change in consciousness in the political mind:
Animal husbandry and welfare has to have the agricultural community’s full support.
Sure, some small animal vets as well (there is a shortage of specialists in the ‘exotic’ field of rabbits and guinea pigs as well, don’t even think about looking for a person in the know about bords and reptiles away from the city!!!)

Lower the cost of tuition - and probably the grade requirements.
This could be funded out of the agricultural budget
Sure, most large animal producing outfits administer most care themselves.
But we are also undergoing a shift in society. More urban folks are entering the field and lack the handed down knowledge of those who (never) came before them.

But in general, those astronomical tuitions are the death of the country.
Regardless of profession

[MorganMaresVT]

I thought of this thread this morning. My vet sent an email blast to all clients a few weeks ago announcing two weekends (Fri-Sun) of mobile Lyme vaccine clinics- this weekend and a weekend in September (we are in a Lyme endemic region and even though my horses have all tested acute/chronic in the past we add the vaccine as one more hedge against future problems). She offers the vaccine at a discount and a $12 farm call fee to vaccinate as many horses as you have (I have 3 at home).

In her email, she asked for you to respond with a call or email outlining any of the 6 dates you could be available, and she would work out the scheduling and let you know your scheduled day, with a one hour appointment window. It was all seamless, I got a return email a few days after responding, giving me my date and my one-hour window, with a request that the horses were all caught and stalled/tied at a gate so she could get out of the truck and take care of them quickly. This morning I got a call when she was 20 minutes away and we were stalled, groomed, and ready for her when she arrived.

Thinking of this thread, as soon as she arrived I thanked her profusely for her willingness to offer this and make it so easy for the vaccination. Even without the discount, her making it this easy is much appreciated. She appreciated the thanks, but said truthfully managing these weekends is a pain in the ass because people are nonresponsive to her outreach and then get annoyed if they aren’t scheduled and have to pay a regular farm call fee, or get mad and give her a hard time if they can’t have their preferred day/time. I just don’t understand what is wrong with people. She couldn’t possibly make it any easier to be a good client, and people still can’t handle it.

She is a single-vet practice, and also a serious rider/competitor herself. She didn’t hang around too long after the shots as she had to get moving, but in the course of our pleasantries she did mention there was a competition next weekend she really wanted to be at with her young horse, but was having trouble finding coverage so not sure it was going to be possible for her to get away to the competition. I can’t imagine the number of things she’s juggling.

[mvp]

@LSMarnell

I’m not demanding it. But, it just seems like a realistic part of the job when your patients weigh over a half ton and are hard to transport. Especially when they are sick/injured.
Should every horse owner have to buy a $50,000 rig for emergency use?

You mean “should” all horse owners buy a rig in the ethical sense of “should”? If this is the only way to get life-saving medical care for your optional, luxury animal than I suppose that requirement is ethical.

I think human medicine has gone to sh!t as well. In fact, vet medicine with it’s house calls and a vet who knows you plus takes the time to educate you has spoiled me for all other kinds of medicine.

So if you want to argue that all of those other doctors need to make things cheaper and easier for us (not easier or more lucrative for them), that’s cool, But you are fighting an uphill battle.

I hate it when people suddenly turn the profession of veterinary medicine into some kind of calling or hobby when they can’t pay or don’t want to or have some knew business practice become A Thing. Vets never owed us more than do doctors. And I don’t see much success with holding the human medical profession to such ethical standards.

And, by way of an ETA: owning your own rig is not the only way to get a horse to a clinic in an emergency.

But I do agree with the OP (and others) being really worried when they find their avenues to good vet help closed off. While owning horses, I have chosen to live in places (and buy rigs) so that I could insure adequate vet care for my horses.

[LCDR]

Medicine has concierge practices. Patients pay a monthly fee or retainer. In return they have direct access to the practice.which typically enrolls far fewer patients than the usual private practice. I have never heard of this type of veterinary practice.

If such practices were available from equine veterinarians, would anyone reading this thread consider one of them? The veterinarian would have a predictable guaranteed minimum income, plus fees for services on top of that. I suppose, too, the retainer fee would have to be per horse.

[lenapesadie]

My Dr’s group is $1800 per year. The draw is guaranteed same day or next day appts (prioritized by urgeny I presume if needed) and after hour emergency calls to the Dr. Honestly, I’m not sure I’d pay that much in membership fees for the vet. But I would pay something smaller.

[BrendaJane]

If you have more than one horse the fee would be reasonable
About the cost of one farm call a month

[4Frogs_aLilypad]

I think lowering tuition cost would help tremendously. The vet at my former barn flat out told us it wasn’t worth the money these days because you’d never make the money back
A change in awareness on the mental health front might also be helpful. . Being saddled with enormous debt, working long hours at a physically, mentally and emotionally demanding job has a really high cost, not speaking monetarily. It’s worth noting that veterinarians have a pretty high suicide rate when compared to other professions.

[trubandloki]

Higher education is a huge money making business at this point. The chance of getting tuition lowered is slim to none.