Help Us Help You
We respect you and want to share our current reality.
Why the longer wait times? Veterinary medicine was already heading for a bottleneck. COVID-19 made it much worse, much faster. We are seeing 2x more emergencies, with significant increase in critical emergencies and hospitalized patients. This coupled with ongoing staff shortages and closures of other local emergency hospitals have caused longer wait times and exceeds capacity of our ICU.
MORE EXAMS NEEDED
Pet ownership is at an all-time high.
- 30% of Americans adopted a pet during the pandemic.
- 70% of all US households (90.5 million families) now own at least one pet.
- This constitutes 388,000 additional households since 2019.
MENTAL HEALTH
Burnout is on the rise.
- Veterinarians are listed as having one of the highest suicide rates.
- 1 in 6 DVM’s have contemplated suicide.
- Pre-pandemic, 50% of veterinary technicians left the field after 5 years due to the toll of the job. This number is higher now.
- 50% of veterinary CSR’s (receptionists) have left the field since the start of the pandemic.
- Burnout scores for all veterinary staff were 9.4% higher in 2021 than 2020.
FEWER VETS
There is a national shortage of Vets.
- 10,000 baby boomers retire daily: 1 in 3 US veterinarians is a boomer.
- 32 US-accredited veterinary schools graduate just 3,200-3,700 new DVMs per year.
- Each current DVM serves anywhere from 1,000 – 3,000 households.
TAKING ACTION
What are we doing to improve these situations?
- We collaborate daily with other local emergency hospitals to orchestrate emergency care services for the community pets.
- Repurposing of our hospital space which doubled our ICU capacity.
- Reserving wellness and GP exams for existing clients.
- Creative recruiting for DVM’s and support staff.
We remain committed.
We cherish the Human-Animal bond as you do.
We value your trust and sincerely thank you for your understanding & patience as we provide the best veterinary care possible to the animals we love.
