Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard cub (7 mos old) - Cape May County Zoo

Sunday, February 9, 2014

After the Respite

It has been a while since I've come in here and shared anything with you. I hope that I still have your interest and attention but if not, it's certainly incumbent on me to regain it.

At times I feel like the same things are said over and over, yet no two days in veterinary medicine are truly the same. So my perfectionism has, perhaps, gotten the best of me and caused me to pause in my writings. 

There are many things that come up each day in practice that surprise me or show themselves as educational points. I now run the practice Facebook page, so I've been using my time and focus on that. If you are interested click on this link: Pocono Peak Veterinary Center

But here's an article of interest that I've known about for a while. By the way it's not the only article about it. There are others from other sources. Everything has unforeseen (or maybe even seen but not cared about) consequences. Things that may not seem at first to impact on our businesses and lives, at further glance, do. In this case, legislation that affects such a huge portion of our budget and lives, most certainly has an impact on small businesses like veterinary offices. While healthcare laws do not impact us like our human physician colleagues, anything that impacts the economy will hit us too. Our business is dependent upon disposable income. We operate under free market principles. It's a beautiful thing. Competition leads to lower costs for clients, increasing skill allows us to (rightfully) earn more, and transparency makes everyone responsible for what they spend. There's no overuse on something you feel the cost of AND there's no one telling me how to practice. Thank God!

 ACA Impacts Veterinarians shows just a few things that will happen as this rolls on. Of course I don't have to tell you when there are less jobs and lower incomes, we can certainly expect people to budget differently and spend less on their pets. We are already seeing these effects which are likely to only get worse. Pets don't come in until much later in a disease process or worse, we are seeing pets abandoned when people lose their jobs or homes. 

Don't worry though, we are a very stubborn hard working group of people. We didn't get into this for the money (we knew we'd be in debt and could've done a lot of other things) but we do need to pay our bills too. We are creative and innovative and won't let anyone stand in our way of doing what we love. I, for one, will continue the good fight!