New Year, New Price List!

Well, it's only the 7th of January and I'm already exhausted! Vets and vet nurses around the country have little or no Christmas or New Year break! Sadly pets never cease to be poorly so we have to be on call around the clock for the seasonal mishaps!

These mishaps often involve pets either eating things they shouldn't (bones, toys and even a pair of glasses!) and the repercussions of those little "treats" (the runs from too much turkey basically!). It's our responsibility to deal with them all, whenever they occur, night or day.


After this mayhem, January is a month for reflection and future financial planning, and sadly, often, price increases. Many people think vets make a fortune, that we roll around in the cash at the end of the day, but I've never met a rich vet yet, although a lot of wealthy drug reps and doctors! Vet practices tread a very fine line of keeping veterinary treatment affordable whilst charging enough to fund the large cost of providing veterinary care.

Any price increase is not easily met amongst the staff at any practice including ours. Our concerns for our clients is clearly visable. That said, its only when I studied the finance unit of a business course I attended, that I realised that price increases are a neccessary evil when our costs are rising around us. Its more a case of fat cats in other companies than any fat cats being present in ours!

So where does the money you pay go I hear you ask? Well, think of everyone and everything you come in contact with when you visit the vets. We don't have loads of stock to sell to passers by to make our money. Often, we just have; a vet consult fee and drugs. That's it. And in the cost of that we have to cover the cost of the following:

1. The receptionist that takes your call - salary, training and pension
2. The computer system that records your details and saves your appointment - upgrades, security and maintenance
3. The building you enter to attend your appointment - maintenance, water, electricity, heating, council services, cleaning
4. Receptionist that welcomes you - salary, training and pension
5. Vet that examines your pet - salary, continued study , pension
6. Drugs your pet is given - ordering system, delivery, advanced purchase so you do not have a return visit, dispensing pot
7. Nurse who talks you through your medication - salary, continued study and pension

The things you don't see? 

• 24 hour service; if your practice provides its own out of service, the cost of this will lie in the fees you pay, whatever time you visit the practice. Because even if you're not using the out of hours service at the moment, the practice still needs to cover the cost of running the building 24/7 and to pay a nurse and a vet to be on site ready and waiting for when you do need them - because when that day comes when you need them, you'll be over the moon that they're there. 
• Improvements and investment; like any business, practices need to save funds in the pot to invest in the building and the staff to maintain it for the future. Whether that's expanding the hospital to accommodate more patients or employing a new vet to make more appointments available to you
• The state of the art equipment; x-ray machines, ultrasound scanners, ECG monitors, blood test machines,
  
  operating instruments - all these don't come cheap! But if a practice doesn't own them, then your pet will have to be shipped off to a referral practice (that will be a LOT more expensive!) when your pet is at its poorliest. The alternative of everyone paying a small amount towards these is that we charge a fortune to those few poor unlucky souls who need use of them at the most desperate times.
• Continued study - veterinary science is making fast paced advances all the time, and vets and nurses have to continue to study and develop their skills in order to provide the best healthcare to their patients. These courses can range from a few hundred to a few thousand pounds, but to maintain their registration with the RCVS, vets have to complete an average of 35 hours of CPD (Continued Professional Development) every year, and nurses have to complete an average of 15 hours every year. 

I hope no one feels I've been ranting about this. I fully understand the cost of pet care - I own pets and a staff discount in a vet practice doesn't go as far as in retail!!! I just wanted to help people understand why we have to charge what we do, and why there are unavoidable increases when our costs increase :(

I promise you, everyone who works in the veterinary industry does it for the love of the animals, not the money, most veterinary staff are on a lot less than people think and often have thousands of pounds worth of education fees to pay. Its very soul destroying when a client accuses me of being heartless and money robbing because nothing could be further from the truth :(

If only there was an animal version of the NHS, although unconsciously we all pay for that too..........