Has the ER gotten more expensive?

It seems like lately, every case has devolved into a battle over money. Understandably, people have less and less disposable income, and that’s what veterinary medicine depends upon to get animals fixed up and to keep the lights on in the clinic.

But this ever-present issue seems to have reached a boiling point of late. It is hard to actually get things done for a patient when every dollar has to be scrutinized and justified. I don’t mean to say that I blame pet owners for watching their pennies (or, as my mom always says saving your chavos, which sounds vaguely off-color to me), as everyone has felt the pinch since things went all whoopsy a few years ago, but since we depend on owners to foot the bill for tests and treatments, the path forward to the blush of full health has become strewn with thorny weeds lately.

Now, when I discuss a certain test or treatment, instead of the usual “OK, let’s go with that” I am more often not met with a wall of questions and requests for predictions.  “Will the treatment work?” “What will the tests show?” And, or course, the eternal “Why no pants?”

If every single test needs to be justified, and I have to engage in a lengthy conversation about each and every item on an estimate, it is hard to move forward and get things going. Again, I don’t blame people for making sure that I don’t run roughshod all over their budgets (I have one myself, and try very hard to stick to it), but it really slows down the process.

I thought for a while that pet insurance might be the answer to this conundrum, but I am not sure anymore. It seems to have lost momentum recently, and the number of insured pets that I see seems to have stayed steady at about 5% for the past couple of years. It could be that the discretionary income just isn’t there for the monthly premiums, or that people haven’t been happy with the product. Or maybe it’s something else. I’m not sure.

Another thing that has been noticeably different in recent months is what we call the ‘stop-treatment’ point. This is the financial limit that people apply to a course of therapy.  They may start the testing or therapy process, but call it quits far sooner than in prior years.  As an example, most owners used to be willing to give their pets three or four days, on average, in ICU to recover from a serious illness or injury, at a cost of five to six hundred a day.  Recently, it seems like we have 48 hours on average to accomplish this task, sometimes even less.

What has been your experience? Have you been less willing to give it a go, and have your pets treated? Have you been more cautious with green-lighting tests and therapy, or quicker to try treating the symptoms rather than diagnosing what’s wrong?  Have you had to stop treating, or even make the heart-rending decision to euthanize a pet because there was no end in sight to the hospital bill?

We are all in this messy financial unpleasantness together, and someday things will improve, but please share your thoughts about changes in the way you have approached the cost of veterinary care in recent months.

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