We’ve all jumped into 2025 as organizations execute plans carefully crafted over the past 6 months, a daunting but exiting conference schedule is about to kick off . . . and most of us wonder what issues will jump to the head of the line. The latter is my menu so let’s get started with the top 3 topics for pet healthcare in America. 2 of the 3 are carryovers from 2024 and the third arrives in center stage shortly.
Veterinary Professionals
Colorado voters approved a new Veterinary professional in November after a hotly-contested ballot measure campaign. The VPA or Veterinary Professional Associate is designed to be a Veterinary version of the PA (Physician Assistant) we’ve grown accustomed to over the past 60 years in human healthcare. The curriculum for this Masters Degree in Veterinary Clinical Care is currently offered by Lincoln Memorial University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and soon to be launched by Colorado State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. It’s crucial for readers to note that this degree is being provided by Veterinary schools, not stand-alone VPA or other higher education institutions. Like human health PA’s, this training is designed to be a short (25-month) but intensive version of Veterinary school. The Masters in Veterinary Clinical Care is not an extension of 2-year Associate Degree programs for credentialed Veterinary technicians, but an abbreviated version of 9-semester DVM programs.
The AVMA, Colorado VMA and many traditional Veterinary trade associations opposed Colorado PA ballot measure, and spent a good deal of money during the campaign. I’ll leave for future columns an in-depth look at the arguments pro and con. What matters now is that the Colorado Board of Veterinary Medicine and its Governor are managing a process to adopt regulations for implementation of the VPA ballot measure. Academic requirements, scope of practice, nature of veterinarian supervision of VPA’s and related topics are on the table in an open, public process. Colorado will serve as a pilot or laboratory for how the VPA license is structured and your author hopes that readers will engage, listen and learn. The same groups on the human side fought the PA license decades ago and now it’s a staple of most, if not all, medical practices and hospitals. I enjoy healthcare at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale where my wife teaches and can say without qualification that PA’s do an excellent job in providing me with medical advice and treatment. Colorado and other states will serve themselves well if close attention is paid to the human health model.
Veterinary Schools
It’s been no secret that new schools are on the horizon, somewhere between 8-10, and 2025 is the year in which the accreditation process becomes more visible and public. Each school presents an unique model but be assured that most if not all new schools intend to deploy the distributive clinical training model. Distributive clinical training is conducted outside of campus teaching hospital in practices, shelters, and anywhere where Veterinary care is provided to animals. We’re starting our third decade with distributive models (Western was first, Lincoln Memorial second) and graduates are going very well. Still, traditionalists continue to question any clinical training outside of land grant teaching hospitals, despite the evidence from practices, and the accrediting body (COE) continually signals concerns about distributive training without any evidence from the field. This potential dispute/debate may spill over into media and interested parties should stay tuned.
The other debate is an issue the COE brought upon itself in late 2024: whether and how to accredit programs that deploy some version of virtual education (often called distance learning) in their Veterinary curriculum. Of course virtually all academic institutions use some form of remote learning (before, during and after COVID), but still the COE is questioning its use for training future veterinarians. Since all, or nearly all, existing accreditation Veterinary schools deploy some level of remote learning this poses a threat to every program. The COE is exploring this issue with all schools and we may hope that the practical, pedagogical and financial value of remote learning is maintained. We are somewhere between 2000-4000 faculty short in U.S. Veterinary schools so it’s hard to see how programs survive if distance learning is shut down.
Access to Care
The third issue swirling around Veterinary care is familiar, but remains a topic: access to care. This phrase is now as ubiquitous as “sustainability” in the early 2000’s, and has its roots in the shortage of Veterinary professionals (veterinarians and vet techs). Pet owners have difficulty accessing professional care for many reasons: financial, transportation, geography, disabilities and, increasingly often, inability to schedule in-person appointments.
Solutions to access to care have surfaced for years and include telemedicine, low-income clinics, emergency medicine, in-store pop-ups, mobile Veterinary care and the like, and now VPA’s. Institutional trade groups routinely oppose these innovations, usually with a twin argument that shortages don’t exist (or are overstated) and these delivery mechanisms are dangerous and will cause harm. The profession itself seems to acknowledge that shortages are real, so that debate has calmed down. We continue to wait on evidence of the harm forecast by non-traditional care modalities…but the debate and acrimony continues.
What can be stated with the certainty of a monk with four aces is that American Veterinary medicine has not “solved” access to care and it poses serious challenges for all parties concerned: professionals, pet owners (especially low income) and, ultimately, pets. The extraordinary growth in the pet healthcare industry, and spread of the human-animal beyond throughout American society, is threatened by access to care limitations and corresponding increase in cost of care. Solutions exist but require everyone at risk to get involved in testing and adopting solutions. Innovations and pilots should be welcomed . . . and at worst forgiven.