A note for anyone who jumbles all of the problems together in their head
One of the strange side effects of the veterinary profession becoming more corporatized and widely invested in seems to be a bigger focus on industry trends. Until recently, there simply wasn’t a lot of coverage of what was going on at a “high level” in the profession. Sure, we had intermittent reports from AVMA, AAHA, and Brakke Consulting about pet owner behavior, but they were nothing compared to the deluge of industry analyses we get today.
I think we saw this smaller focus on the national picture because (a) we didn’t have a wealth of podcasts and newsletters willing and able to gather and report on high level trends every week, (b) there weren’t a lot of interested investor-type people with significant financial interests hanging around, and (c) the vast majority of practices were locally owned so there wasn’t nearly as much of a “higher level” to look at.
Today, for better or worse, there’s a lot more focus on national trends, corporate strategies, and speculation around the future. There are earnings reports to pore over, expert investor analyses to parse, and special interest groups directly and indirectly generating research to justify industry changes they would like to make. Some of this news is frankly uninteresting or irrelevant to most of us at the clinic level – think quarterly earnings reports for companies we don’t buy products from. But some of it gets a lot of our attention. Reports around industry-wide labor shortages, animal welfare, veterinarian or support staff salaries, patient visit numbers, and pet owner pricing concerns are particularly noteworthy.
Being aware of these trends is a good idea. If we want to be good stewards of the profession that we love then we need to know about its overall health. Also, it’s important to understand what other practices are experiencing so that you can decide what practical steps we might take to prepare ourselves and our own clinics. If we want to help pets and people, after all, we kind of need to know how and where they are struggling.
That said, I’m becoming a little concerned with how attuned to these national trends some of my colleagues working in the trenches are today. Tariffs, “petflation,” and declining visits are all concerns that should be on our radars but… we should only check our radars often enough to be helpful. We should try our best not to look at the “big picture” so often as to make ourselves miserable. I worry because I see people in practice walking around with a sense of real anxiety based on news coverage that doesn’t line up with the realities they are actually facing today. That’s an exhausting way to live.
Listen, it’s good to be aware of what is going on at the industry level. At the same time, it’s vital that we remember our clinic does not function at this scale. We can do almost nothing to affect these trends because they are HUGE to the point of being pretty useless at the clinic level. For example, when a report tells us how pet owners are behaving or what is happening “in the industry,” we need to remember that:
- “Pet owners” is a category of people so large as to almost be meaningless. Sixty-six percent of Americans are pet owners. That means saying “Women in America are doing ____” is significantly more specific than talking about what “pet owners” are doing.
Pet owners include people who are old, young, rich, poor, liberal, and conservative. They are from every background and speak every language. I promise you, they are not all having the same experience, they are not all behaving the same way, and they are not all coming to your clinic. - National studies represent what is happening everywhere… and often nowhere. Imagine if I told you that a national study found that the average pet owner was happy with the care they received from their veterinarian. That could mean that everyone across the country is happy, or that the western half of the country adores their vets while the eastern half despises them. It could mean people in urban areas are slightly happy while people in rural areas are slightly unhappy, or that people who go to vet clinics with less than 3 doctors tend to be pleased while people going to larger practices are less so. Theoretically, it could mean veterinarians are universally loved except for one vet named Steve who lives in Albuquerque and is so deeply despised that he brings our entire national average down. That’s the downside to national trends. They’re intentionally non-specific to any one clinic’s situation. The chances that your clinic is exactly matching the trends being reported is therefore extremely low.
My point here is not that national trends or industry-level reports don’t have value. They do, and it’s important to be aware of which way the winds of vet medicine are blowing. The point I want to make is that most of us tend to be much happier and more productive when we focus on things that we can directly control, and less happy and productive when we ruminate on forces beyond our influence. That’s why I want to make sure that people are being mindful about separating tractable problems (problems we can put our hands on) from intractable problems (problems at a scale beyond our personal influence).
If your practice is raising prices, clients are complaining, and you’re starting to see fewer appointments (or getting an increasing number of requests to have records transferred to other clinics) then you need to be working on that. If, however, you are not raising your prices, your clientele is steadily growing, and your business is sound, then maybe you don’t need to ruminate on trends you aren’t experiencing or participating in. Just know others are seeing this and keep that in mind when you intentionally decide to do some strategic planning.
So, while it’s wise to be aware of the big picture and to pay attention to the national discussion, most of us will make our greatest impact and find our peace of mind focusing on the challenges and opportunities right in front of us. Remember that your clinic’s success isn’t defined by national averages, but by the tangible realities within your own four walls. We should all try to ground ourselves in what’s truly happening in our local practices, address the “tractable problems” we can influence, and build a thriving environment one interpersonal interaction at a time. This is the greatest impact we can have, and the best use of our time, intellect, and emotional energy.
