An open letter to the
equine veterinary
The past year has brought rapid-fire change to the industry. While you’ve been adapting to help horses and clients, we’ve been adapting to help you. FOR ME, IT ALL STARTED WITH PONY CLUB IN ENGLAND. I became inseparable from my horse, Flicka, and soon grew to love all things horse-related. In fact, I’ve spent much of my career in animal health dedicated to causes around horse health and welfare. Many of you equine veterinary professionals could tell a similar story. I’ve known enough of you over the years to understand that your love for horses lights up the core of your being and has done so since you were young. Whether through riding club, 4-H involvement, growing up on a ranch or any of the innumerable paths that lead to equine obsession, you live and breathe horses in a way that’s unique
among your colleagues in other segments of veterinary medicine. Unfortunately, I also know that for too many of you, your passion is offset by struggle. You have sacrificed incredibly to do what you love. For one thing, you could easily make more money in small animal practice. And if you are a woman, the income gap is even greater. You recent graduates are likely to be carrying a large student debt load. And irrespective of age or gender, you have accepted the physical risks associated with working around thousand-pound beasts and given up huge chunks of personal time to serve horse owners in their hour and place of need. Yes, there are moments of glorious reward, moments that remind you why you chose this profession in the first place. But for every wobbly new foal you deliver or soft look you get from a horse after relieving its pain, there’s a devastating diagnosis or treatment estimate to deliver that makes your client’s shoulders sag. We all recognize how frustrating it is when economics and emotion meet. In fact, from my 15-plus years working with equine veterinarians, I would go so far as to say it’s highly likely that most of your frustrations and challenges are financial in nature. The business of equine practice is no picnic. Providing top-level medical care to huge animals is expensive—your own costs may be rising every year—but when these costs run up against a client’s limited ability to pay, your passion for the horse often wins out. This makes it all too easy to discount fees, give away services and otherwise limit your revenue. And this is simply not sustainable for your personal or professional financial health. Let’s also talk about accounts receivable for a bit. How many management experts have you heard expound on the need to collect payment at the time of service? And how many of you have been able to successfully make this shift in your practice? From our research, it appears that this is still a challenge for the equine veterinary profession. Just as your medical tools and technology have evolved to meet your unique needs and challenges, your financial tools need to evolve as well. At CareCredit, we want to be part of the solution. We have worked with about 85 percent of eligible vet-
By Boo Larsen, General Manager and Vice President, Veterinary, CareCredit
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Issue 7/2021 | ModernEquineVet.com
