As the gold standard of care (and price of medicine) go higher and higher, is it time to get serious about formalizing a spectrum of care approach? Dr. Emily M. Tincher, Senior Director of Veterinary Relations at Nationwide Pet Insurance, joins the podcast to talk about combining evidence-based medicine and advanced client communication strategies to protect and improve accessibility and affordability of veterinary care.
This episode of the Cone of Shame is made possible ad-free by Nationwide Pet Insurance!
LINKS
Nationwide Spectrum of Care Page: www.spectrum-of-care.com
Nationwide Veterinary Analytics: https://www.petinsurance.com/veterinarians/research/
JAVMA spectrum of care publications:
https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/259/7/javma.259.7.712.xml
Preparing Veterinary Students… Spectrum of Care: https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/259/5/javma.259.5.463.xml
Vetsuccess Industry Tracker: https://vetsuccess.com/resources/veterinary-industry-tracker/
Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Emily M. Tincher is a collaborative and data-driven leader who advocates for a pet-parent centered approach to communication and medicine through spectrum of care approaches. She is a second-generation veterinarian and a 2016 Auburn University’s College of Veterinary Medicine graduate. Emily has practiced clinically in small animal emergency and general practice.
As the Senior Director of Veterinary Relations at Nationwide Pet, she oversees operations and strategy in the veterinary space, including industry relationships and outreach to veterinary students, veterinarians, and veterinary teams. Emily serves on the AVMA Early Career Development Committee and is President of the Board of Directors for the Veterinary Leadership Institute.
Outside of veterinary medicine, Emily enjoys traveling with her husband Kyle, competing with her horse (Blue) in the sport of Eventing, and endlessly spoiling her two perfect dogs (Tuxedo and Cricket) and rotten orange tabby (Exploding Poptart).
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome, everybody, to the Cone Of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. I’m here with my good friend, Dr. Emily Tincher. She is talking with me about Spectrum of Care. She talks a lot about Spectrum of Care. I ask her hard questions about what does Spectrum of Care look like? How is it different from we’ve done in the past? How do we balance making care accessible with advocating for what’s best for pets?
Those things can be challenging when we want to make sure care is affordable. And at the same time, we want to make sure we’re still pushing to do the most good that we can do in the world for the pets. And it’s just, I don’t know, it’s really interesting conversation. Guys, I enjoyed the heck out of this. I hope you’ll enjoy it too. This episode is made possible ad free by our friends at Nationwide Pet Insurance. Gang, let’s get into this episode.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(Singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to The Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Emily Tincher. Thanks for being here.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Andy Roark:
It’s my pleasure. Is this your first time on the podcast? I think it is.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
It is my first time on the podcast, yes.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s amazing to me. You’re a good friend of mine and have been for a long time. I think the world of you and I have known you for years and years. We met way back in the day. I think I had graduated from vet school and you were a vet student. I may be just being very generous to myself in my age.
But we met through the VBMA, which is the student business group. And then, I’ve stayed involved in that as a national advisor for years. And you have stayed involved in well. For those who don’t know, you are the senior director of vet relations at Nationwide Pet Insurance. You are doing a bunch of stuff. Got your hands all over these white papers that have been coming out from Nationwide. They’ve got, just a variety of topics.
It’s different cancer rates according to dog breeds. There’s some senior pet stuff that’s come out. You guys have some new stuff coming out. I think about brachycephalic pets pretty soon. And you’ve just got all this research stuff coming now. And then you are lecturing all over the place on Spectrum of Care, which is an interest of mine and we’ve talked a lot about that. And so yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about today. But it’s surprising to me that I haven’t had you on the podcast before. That’s an oversight on my part. How’s it been?
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
Well, I’m just so excited to be here now. I know we’ve been grateful to just like a bad penny I guess. I keep showing up. From starting as a vet student at Auburn, came in and lectured to our VBMA. And then yeah, we were involved when I was on the national VBMA board and was an advisor with you before I step back now as a founding and platinum sponsor of the VBMA that Nationwide is. And so, get to remain involved just in a different way now building curriculum part.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, yeah. I forgot you were at Auburn.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
[inaudible 00:03:19] at Auburn [inaudible 00:03:20].
Dr. Andy Roark:
I forgot you were at Auburn. You get to do really cool stuff. Yeah, you still go to the vet schools. You guys have some student development programs going on. You get some programs through the vb, a brown Spectrum of Care. You’re getting to do cool stuff, Emily.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
We do cool.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That’s super awesome.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
We spoke at every vet school this year about Spectrum of Care between the spring semester and the fall, which was a lot of fun to get their feedback. And hear the students’ interest in just trying to find ways to meet pet families where they are. And asking questions about how does evidence-based medicine fit in and how do we navigate all the challenges with providing the care that we recommend. Oh, it’s just been, it’s really cool. I’m excited to get into it with you.
Dr. Andy Roark:
All right. Let’s start to talk about Spectrum of Care in general. Just go ahead in your own words, define the term Spectrum of Care for me. And that just to get us on the same page of this general topic.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
Yeah. We did not come up with this definition for the record of Spectrum of Care at Nationwide. We used a published definition that came from a couple of JAVMA publications, that Spectrum of Care is providing a range of diagnostic and treatment options for pet families across basic to advance that meet their needs and their goals with relation to their values and their resources. Of course, including finances being one of the main ones. But that acknowledging that there are many different ways to treat everything from wellness to most conditions that we see in practice.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. Talk to me a bit about how you see Spectrum of Care as a rising topic and trend in vet medicine. What is the integration of Spectrum of Care look like compared to what vet medicine has looked like in the past? A lot of times we talk about Spectrum of Care and a lot of people like, “That’s what we’ve always done.” Help me get my head around how this vision of the future with Spectrum of Care looks different from what we’ve historically done.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
In many ways it doesn’t necessarily look different from Vet Med of many years past. I’m a second generation veterinarian. My parents are both vets and I grew up in their rural practice that they owned in Kentucky. And watching them practice across all the range of socioeconomic statuses of the pet families that they served, I really saw that you can do a lot with a little. And you can also offer people the opportunity to refer or to have advanced level care if that’s what they’re seeking and have the resources to support.
What I think is really important and a critical component of offering a Spectrum of Care is making sure that we integrate the evidence-based medicine that’s available, knowing there’s not as much as we would like in veterinary medicine with pet family centered communication. And so, we could talk a little bit about some exciting research that we completed this year at Nationwide in partnership with my genomics advisors that work towards communicating in a pet family centered way.
I think there are many people that are practicing a Spectrum of Care right now. What I think is often not discussed is how to do that as a vet student and a new graduate. When I watched my parents growing up, they practiced the Spectrum of Care. They just, they maybe didn’t have a term to call it that, but they practiced the Spectrum of Care.
Dr. Andy Roark:
They didn’t have a marketing slogan for it. Yeah.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
Right. It’s helpful though to have a term and to have definitions that we can all get behind and work towards. I think the pendulum is swung with academia to where, for quite some time, we were focused on excitingly and fairly the increased specialization. And it took I think a little bit of time for our profession to notice that there were some challenges associated with the awesome education that specialists can provide.
And we need them very much. But sometimes there is a little bit of an oversight or a lot of an oversight on but what does it look like when people can’t or don’t want to pursue the most advanced level of care? Especially as we have new diagnostics, we have new drugs that are awesome, allow us to do more than we ever have in the past.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
They also cost more. And that’s not necessarily veterinary medicine. I think one of the greatest challenges that we see is that veterinary medicine, the advanced level of care getting more expensive. And if we can only think that you deserve to own a pet if you provide that advanced level of care that pets are a luxury, we’re in trouble.
Not only is it unrealistic, but pet families are not considering what their vet thinks before they go get a pet. We want to serve the diverse population of pet families that are out there that do have over 50 million owned US cats and dogs. Then we are going to have to meet them where they’re at a little bit with what their goals are and what their needs are.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, okay. That’s a lot to unpack and I like it. First of all, let me say, I think you really put your finger on how I feel about this. Because I like to ask questions that I struggle to answer myself because I’m like, “Oh, maybe Emily will have a better answer than I do.” I think when you talked about a pendulum, I think that’s where I am as well.
And so, when we talk about Spectrum of Care and giving people options, I think a lot of people go, “Well we’ve given options forever.” I think that you’re exactly right, is when we zoom in on how we train new graduates and an increasingly high gold standard of care. To me, that’s the pendulum swing of, I love that we have pushed towards increasing our capabilities and what we can do and how we educate our doctors.
And at some point, I do think it’s time to swing back a little bit the other way and say, “And just because theoretically we can do something doesn’t mean that that’s going to be the best course of action for this individual pet owner.” I also, from a wellness standpoint, think that if we set ourselves up as doctors as I’m only a good doctor if I get people to do the highest technical standard of care possible, I don’t think that’s realistic. And that may sound foolish, but I know young doctors who grade themselves that way.
They’re like, “Well, I couldn’t get this person to do a TPLO.” And I go, well, why did you think you had that? All you can do is recommend and advocate and you’re not going to be able to magically enable people to give their pet of TPLO. You’re going to have to talk about medical management sometimes. And that’s not ideal. That’s not what we aim for, but it’s not a failure on your part if that’s just not in the cards with this patient.
And real skill as a doctor comes from being able to look at that and saying, “Okay. What other cards do we have to play here to get the best outcome possible in this case?” I really like that a lot. I think that I want to ask…
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
There’s a small piece I want to dive into that you just mentioned there that it may not be ideal if a pet family doesn’t choose a TPLO. Well, I mean there’s some great evidence base that I’d love to that that example you brought up is one where we do have great evidence-based medicine. That there are other options like a lateral suture, for example, that can have a very similar outcome to a TPLO or a TTA referral historically, usually to see a board certified surgeon.
Now, the best possible outcome may be to go see a surgeon with the lowest chances of complications. However, talking to pet families about their options, that range of basic to intermediate options, my definition that I’m trying to use more and more is that the ideal or best outcome, the medical component is included, but that the best outcome is the best outcome for the family.
If for them, they’re anxious about surgery, about anesthesia, even if it’s not just about costs, maybe there’s a comorbidity for the pet. It might be that basic care is the best for that particular family for multiple reasons in addition to finances. Or it may be that if your practice offers that more intermediate approach of a lateral suture, which not everyone has that skillset, the ability to perform that surgery. That’s in addition to meeting that family where they’re at with their goal to stay with you as a general practitioner can help keep the revenue within your practice if you have the ability to perform that surgery.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Well, I’d also would add to that too, when we think about what is success. I like to take the long view on these things as well and say trust in the relationship is also a factor of success for me as well. I definitely seen people go in and aggressively advocate for a path of care and get it done. And then that client will do it. And then they go home and they’re like, “I’m not going back to that person. I felt pressured. This isn’t what… In hindsight, I felt pressured into this course of action. I didn’t want to do it and I don’t really like that veterinarian.”
And so I’d say, well, now we won the battle but lost the war. Especially if those people are reluctant to go back to a veterinarian and it affects care in the future. And so, I always try to say that the outcome for me is not the best outcome today. It’s the best outcome over the life of the pet and the life of multiple pets underneath one client.
I want to dive in a little bit and take apart some of the stuff that you said earlier because I think that this is an interesting way that you’ve built this up when you talk about spectrum care. You talked about evidence-based medicine and then you talked about communication. And sounds like you’re putting those two things together.
And so, you threw around the term evidence-based medicine and then when we talked about the TPLO, you got to unpacked it a little bit. Talk to me about those two things. We’re going to start with evidence-based medicine, then I’m going to talk to you about the communication. We can get into the genomics research and stuff like that as well.
Just unpack that for me. When you say evidence-based medicine, this is a phrase I’ve heard for the last couple decades is thrown around. I think when I talk about Spectrum of Care and look at Spectrum of Care, one of the things I really struggle with is what is good medicine? And what is an acceptable standard?
And I think a lot of us have a certain level of fear because we talk about malpractice. Malpractice is failing to meet the standard of care, which is not written down anywhere. It’s a concept that lives in the minds of the people who will be reviewing your work. And I think that that is a scary idea. And so, help me get my head around what is evidence-based medicine? What is actually out there that’s useful? And what do you see as the future of this and its impact on our profession?
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
Yeah, I think it’s a great point to bring up. And it’s a common challenge that we have been discussing, not alone certainly, with other organizations to say, “What does it mean to uphold a standard of care, which is what we are legally and ethically required to uphold as veterinarians.” Everything that is above the standard of care, can fit into a Spectrum of Care that range from basic to advanced.
But yeah, how do you know what meets the basic needs? What is the minimum for any particular thing that you are seeing for the day, whether it’s well care or whether it’s something with a sickness or an injury? Well, it’s great when we have evidence-based medicine, i.e. there are some actual research studies, ideally publications that allow us to say, “We know that this particular condition has this particular outcome with this particular treatment in some cohort of dogs.”
Now, sometimes we have that and I think a parvo is one that I love considering for a Spectrum of Care. Say, okay, it’s a pretty common challenge that we have to treat in veterinary medicine. And there is, we have a advanced level protocol of hospitalization that typically has about a 90% success rate. And then we have an intermediate level option for pet families with other components to consider having to come back and forth to the practice every day to meet the Colorado State protocol for outpatient management.
That particular protocol has an 80% success rate. Eight in 10 dogs will do well with outpatient management versus nine in 10 with hospitalization. And the difference in costs is drastic. It’s often thousands of dollars. Talking to pet families about their odds, the pros and cons of the decision that they make. And having the confidence to make those recommendations. I think all of us as applied scientists feel better about knowing what the options are and recommending them in a way that can address the concerns any particular pet family has, when we have that evidence-based component to lean upon.
You mentioned some of the white papers that we’ve published. We are trying to add to that with our over 40 years of experience in pet health and over 1.1 million pets insured at Nationwide, we have a lot of data. And so we’re trying to analyze that data. We have a dedicated pet health analytics and insights team led by our chief veterinary officer, Dr. Jules Benson, where we are trying to add to that, but it’s a mammoth task. Leaning on evidence-based medicine is huge for Spectrum of Care, knowing we aren’t going to have all the information that we want most of the time.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I love it. I would really love to continue to see these types of publications. Get the data out so you can publish something. I think the parvo is a great example. I’m really glad you brought that up. I mean just to be able to even just to know, hey, 90% success rate this way, 80% this way. You can have really clear conversations. You can have a clear thought in your mind about how you feel about what you’re advocating.
And I don’t know. There’s that, I remember earlier in my career saying, “Okay, I’m going to make sure that I document that these people declined hospitalization.” And that’s still good practice, but I felt a certain fear or moral weight of like, “Oh, I don’t know what’s going to happen when they take this pet and they leave. And am I impressing on them enough the dangers of leaving?”
You go, “Okay. Well, now I have some things to fall back on and some guidance where I can say they’re not going to be able to hospitalize.” And we can have this with our conversation. And they also know the choice that they’re making and I can give them that clarity. I think that’s beautiful.
Talk to me a bit about the communication part of this. And so, part of it is having a knowledge of what are options, what are inside our Spectrum of Care? What is between the gold standard and acceptable standard, what are our options in there? And then communicating those. Talk to me a little bit about your ideas about what good Spectrum of Care communication looks like.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
Yeah. It’s a great question and I’m going to answer it in a couple of parts. One being some of the really cool research that we completed this summer with Nationwide and partnering with Mind Genomics Advisors. And then the second one being piloting out that research and getting feedback from vet healthcare teams and feedback from vet students with our college program.
Part one is what does it look like to communicate with pet families in a pet family centered way. Avoiding judgment and trying to actively be sure that we are understanding what their goals and their values are as well as their resources. The finances component that we sometimes focus on can feel negative to pet families, depending on how we represent things. Not in a way that I think we mean for it to.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Sure.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
But I’ve had a pet family say to me that, “It felt like I was talking to my vet about and they seemed like a used car salesman.” I was like, “No vet wants to sound like that.” I’m confident that none of us want to come off that way, but I can understand it. It is important to have those financial discussions.
How do we that? And how do we shortcut the communications to get to the point of what do pet families really value? What are they looking for from us? And what are they looking for from veterinary healthcare? We try to identify that with a process that Mind Genomics has used mostly in human medicine to understand what are the subconscious drivers behind the choices that we make?
And I won’t go through the process for how we did it right now since it gets a little nerdy. But the output is that we identified three different viewpoints. Through instead of going through typical survey methods, they use a mixture of multiple types of sciences. Behavioral science is a big one that they lean upon. Even some food science ideas are included.
But getting to the idea of, “Okay, there are three categories of…” And we built messaging surrounding Spectrum of Care and how pet family, how specifically pet parents would respond to 36 different messages. And the end, we have three viewpoints.
The first one is one that’s focused on two things, optionality. They’re looking for their vet healthcare team to talk to them about the options available to them. And they’re looking to have a strong focus on what the evidence-based component, what the outcome for their pet’s health is going to be.
Second one is highly focused on a mixture of they’re cost conscious. But also, what does it look like to feel clinical empathy from their vet healthcare team that feel like they’re the best pet owner they possibly can be, while acknowledging that this group is pretty cost conscious. They’re looking for ways to either they’re unable or unwilling, they’ve got multiple priorities going on. They’re looking for different ways to have the best possible value for any plans that we present to them.
And the last one is a group that’s highly focused on how can we integrate our recommendations with their schedules in a convenience? How can we make the medications that we recommend or the follow-up schedule that we recommend as easy as possible for their schedule? While still all three groups seem very focused on what’s good for their pet, but that shows up in different ways for them.
The top finding that we have from this research is that, which leads to the implementation of this, everyone hates having the most expensive option offered first. I’m going to just let that sink in for a moment because that is how most of us are trained to present options to pet families.
And by considering that. But with that finding as a top finding, when we asked pet families how do they want us to engage in communication with them, with that as a top finding. We went back to the research and said, “Okay. Well, the interesting thing about the order that we present our recommendations in is that the first option,” and this is again, not research that we came up with but is well represented in a Spectrum of Care publication, Brown et al. if anyone wants to go look for more information, about the order that you represent, things is pretty cognitively biased.
There’s a ton of research in human healthcare that the first option presented is usually the one that people choose. But that does not mean people are later happy with that choice. Going back to your observation earlier that sometimes we do eventually get people to agree to the most advanced option. And they say yes to it, but later, they may not come back. They may reflect on that and say, “It wasn’t exactly what I wanted or needed for my family.”
The recommendation that we are going with, again with published research supporting it, is to instead use our research and we have a tool that will be releasing early next year that will help with this. To use our research to instead recommend the option that you think will fit best with the pet family first, make sure they have three options and then check in. And say, “Okay, which one do you think is the best fit based on this conversation that we’re having?”
And finally, be sure, of course, that you document that you have discussed all three options and why the pet family has chosen that option. To get back to the fear that you mentioned earlier of how do we make sure that we feel comfortable with the idea of a Spectrum of Care? Well, documentation is a very important part of that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. This gets into the weeds pretty quick.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
It does.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I think the obvious places where this gets pretty hairy is how do you know which is the best fit for the pet parents? And so again, we’ve talked for a long time about not X-raying people’s wallets or guessing as to what they’re able or available to do.
And we all have pretty good research that also says people are not as transparent as they like to think that they are. People don’t tend to know what you’re thinking. And so, I guess that would be my first question is how do you know what fits well with the parents?
Then the other thing I would say is how does this interface with the idea that vet professionals have a responsibility to advocate for what’s best for the pet? And as opposed to making things easy on the pet owner. I think some of it comes down to what are your goals in the room? Yeah. And so, I guess I put that back to you. I know it’s a lot to unpack, but what does that look like? And to me, this is really where things get difficult to parse apart.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
How do you know what pet family’s goals are and their resources are?
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
Yeah. It’s I mean in some way, we have to have a conversation. And no amount of research or tool that we can provide will be able to magically tell us, you still, every pet family’s going to be a little bit different. Have to have that conversation. Which begins, it’s not for the veterinarian to have, it’s for the whole healthcare team to have. Which is what I love about the resources that you put together is acknowledging that everyone has a massive role in these conversations. And from technicians and CSRs and then the vet is the final link in that team.
Is the research that we have can help shortcut that by asking a few questions. And a process that says, “Okay. In general, most of the time these are, people fit into one of three categories based on a couple of questions that we ask.” And what’s really important about that research is that we also ask the demographics associated with it.
Sometimes, there have been previous conversations around assuming that various socioeconomic levels or anyone with a different family or racial or ethnic background might have certain ways that they interact with their pet. And not only is that biased and ethically wrong, it’s also not founded in the research.
It’s almost a even split, whether you’re looking at age, income level, familial status, education level. Almost a even split across those three viewpoints, which is great. It was certainly what you hope to find is great justification for saying, “You can’t look at someone and just imagine what they might value. You have to have the conversation.”
And our process helps I think shorten that conversation. But it’s still, whether it’s a major life event has just happened, of course, we’ve had vet healthcare teams. We have people tell us, they do tell us things all the time. We’re such a trusted profession that I’m so grateful to be part of that people feel comfortable. Even as a ER vet, they’ve never met me before, feel comfortable telling me that they’ve just lost their husband, that their house just burned down. That they are going on vacation and therefore things are… Or they just got back from vacation yesterday. And so that’s uncomfortable to admit that that’s why your finances are tough, but it’s real life.
Having that conversation and asking, asking in a way that’s collaborative is I think step one, even though knowing it can be uncomfortable but it’s more uncomfortable. And cut to your second part of your question, doesn’t help pets get any care. If we only recommend something that’s not possible for the pet family, they’re getting nothing. If they walk away and say no or they say yes, but they never come back to see us again, in my opinion, that’s worse for the pet long term.
Dr. Andy Roark:
I really like that. That’s really good examples. What it sounds like you’re saying, I guess how it strikes me is this is what we’ve always done. In a lot of ways, it’s about building a trusting relationship and having good communication.
And I go back to relationship. It’s as you say this, I think about how transparent people have been in the past with me about what’s possible and where they are. And they go, “Oh.” I think probably a lot of us are doing this in a common sense way. I can say my take in the exam room is if there’s something that, based on our conversation, I think is the best fit for them, I generally say, “Based on our conversation, this is what I think is probably going to be the best fit for us.” And then I’ll say, “Alternatively, more aggressively, blank, or more conservatively, blank.”
And I give them those options. But it’s always been, I very much am aware and take advantage of the fact that the first thing that I say is going to have extra weight. Which is why I try to do the best job of saying, “This is what I recommend.” I think big things for me are just the basics. Blocking and tackling of exam room communication, which is open-ended questions.
Listen to people, ask to learn, not to respond. Try to understand where they’re coming from. Ask them some lead in questions about how do you feel about this? Or what would you think about this? Or what are your concerns? Or what are your goals for today? And things like that. And just try to extract those bits of information. But I think those are really good examples of what it looks like to listen to a person and then make a good recommendation based on your understanding of what they’ve shared with us.
I’ve always thought that it was cringe-worthy when, the idea being that a veterinarian would go into an exam room and listen to a person talk about how they just lost their car because it got repossessed. And then they turn around and make this recommendation, which is, “Well, here’s what we need to do.” And they give this very high price thing. And then offer some lower cost alternatives. That was like, “Didn’t you hear what I said when I talked about losing my car?”
And I just think that’s just basic common sense of being a good person and building a relationship. And playing against the long term. The goal is not to work today to is build a relationship with this pet owner that’s going to get them on board with taking care of their pet and communicating with me as a healthcare provider for the long term. I think you really answered that well. That makes a lot of sense.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
I think it’s more important than ever to have, I love the way you described, it’s a lot of core communication skills that they’re not new, but they are really important. But it’s more important than ever to employ them in a non-judgmental way.
I think we still have, estimates vary, but if you look at the access to care coalitions research, at least 50% of US-owned cats and dogs don’t see a veterinarian on an annual basis. And if you look at our partners at Vet Success who analyze on and sit on a very cool, free weekly tracker that the number of vet visits is going down. But the revenue and income associated with them is going up.
It’s getting more expensive to provide care. And that has implications for the pet families that we serve. It’s a challenging problem for sure, but it’s not sustainable, for us as a profession, to have fewer and fewer people coming in and bring their pets in. Nor is it serving the basic needs. I think we can all agree that pets deserve some amount of basic healthcare. Right now, we’re, staffing challenges notwithstanding, already not serving about 50% of the US-owned cats and dogs out there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah. Emily Tincher, you’re amazing. Thank you so much for being here and talking through this with me. You’ve thrown out a lot of resources, you have a lot of things going on. What are your favorite resources right now? What are the things that you want people to be most aware of?
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
That’s a great question. One of the things that you could do to find our white papers. We talked a little bit about some of the evidence-based medicine we’re putting out into the world is petinsurance.com/petdata is where you can find them. We have a new Spectrum of Care website that will be launching in January, so stay tuned for that.
But you can also follow Jules or I on LinkedIn. And then, as far as additional resources for you’re just interested in Spectrum of Care, the Brown et al. paper that I mentioned, as well as England et al., which is published from the Ohio State, who are absolutely leading in a Spectrum of Care in education, are some great places to just to get started if you want to learn more about the topic itself.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, guys, I’ll put links in the show notes to all those things so you can just check them out there. Emily, thanks again for being here. Everybody, take care of yourself.
Dr. Emily M. Tincher:
Thanks for having me.
Dr. Andy Roark:
And that is our episode, guys. That’s what I got for you. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. Thanks again to Nationwide for making this episode possible. Gang, take care of yourselves. Be well. Talk to you soon.
