But what if this process could be easier on the animals, owners and pet care providers?
Veterinary telehealth services, like Dutch and Vetster, are working to provide solutions to some of the challenges in veterinary care by connecting owners with licensed veterinarians through video calls, chat and text messaging.
This alternative option increases accessibility to basic veterinary care and allows visits to happen in a pet’s home. These services tend to come at a cheaper cost than in-person care and may attract veterinarians who left in-person practices during the pandemic, said Joe Spector, co-founder and CEO of Dutch.
However, for Texas veterinarians wanting to pursue this online care; state legislation limits the extent of services they can provide.
According to Texas law, veterinary telemedicine – the ability to diagnose, treat and prescribe animals medication – is not permitted unless a veterinary client relationship is established in-person. Veterinarians who practice solely through these digital services are only able to give teleadvice – indicating the next step or helping refer a client to a local clinic or hospital.
Pet care providers on these online platforms are able to see animals for less critical care like behavioral issues, skin problems, diarrhea and urinary tract infections; as these visits often involve suggestions or walking the patient through what they could do to alleviate the problems, said Dr. Brian Evans, clinical director at Dutch.
Evans, who owns two of his own animal hospitals in California, is a general practitioner and has worked in veterinary telemedicine since 2014. He said although he can’t touch the animals he is evaluating, often their problems are easier to detect in this scenario as they are less resistant to care in their own homes.
“I actually get a much better assessment of a pet’s true status at home versus when they’re coming to the vet hospital, because animals are always anxious and stressed out in the hospital, so they’re not relaxed like they are at home,” Evans said.
According to Evans, the key to veterinary telehealth service is not using it as the primary care but as an adjunct to in-person care. Veterinarians should use these platforms to provide information to clients that are concerned and may be unable to understand what their next steps need to be.
“I think what I have noticed is that clients need to have access to veterinarians because they have a lot of questions they want to ask and when veterinarians are in the clinics or hospitals all day, they can’t always answer them,” Evans said. “That’s why this is great because it provides clients with basic information they need and allows us to tell them if it is something they can monitor or if they should seek care for immediately.
Texas telehealth veterinarians can alleviate pet parents’ concerns that something worse could be wrong with their animals by providing these immediate answers, said Cerys Goodall, chief operating officer of Vetster.
“We don’t want people going to Dr. Google because it gives you a lot of information but doesn’t know your pet and what’s really going on,” Goodall said.
Goodall said veterinary telemedicine services increase the access to care by placing it in the palm of owners’ hands, “A lot of what our customers are looking for is just help in that moment,” Good said. “They want to understand emergent or not, if they should go into a clinic or hospital or if they can wait.”
Although this accessibility can be considered helpful to a pet owner, Robert Fisher, the hospital director at Garden Oak Veterinary Clinic, said users of these online services need to supplement this digital care with in-person visits.
“Convenience is not as important as having a client veterinary relationship, telemedicine can give clients care to a degree, but it gets back to what you can and cannot do,” Fisher said. “With an animal you’re taking a subjective opinion from an owner, without being able to touch and treat the animal, a diagnosis becomes much more difficult.”
Some owners turn to this care as a substitute for routine in-person visits because of the reduced costs. Dutch’s subscriptions start at $30 for their monthly services or $12 a month for their annual plan. Vetster, gives users a choice between a subscription or a pay-by-visit model that starts at a flat-rate of $50. Whereas, in 2022 the average cost of an in-person pet visit in Texas with no additional charges was about $59, according to Forbes.
“Money always comes to people’s mind, but I think the question becomes what is the cost vs. the benefit,” Fisher said.
Fisher suggested a way for pet parents to meet in the middle of online pet care and in-person veterinary visits could be through the use of mobile vets, like local company Rockin’ Pets and Rollin’ Vet – a service that brings veterinarians to the houses of owners to provide care on site.
Fisher said he could see these telehealth services bridging the gap in animal care, not in cities, but smaller communities, where veterinarian care is harder to come by. “I do see some of the benefits in more remote areas, if you are further out it may be more difficult to seek this care, as a result of that people might be more willing to use it if they’re in those areas.”
Vetster is unique in providing this assistance in these smaller communities, because unlike other platforms they don’t exclusively cater to cats, dogs and other smaller mammals. They provide care to 20 different species including horses, donkeys, snakes birds and other exotic, larger animals.
“With large animal vets practicing these tools probably help them the most because they often have to travel to check on an animal,” Goodall said. “But with these services now, geographic boundaries no longer exist, these veterinarians can talk to the owners to see if their assistance is needed immediately or if they can take the trip another day.”
This saves these veterinarians the hours-long and expensive travel days, Goodall said.
Both Vetster and Dutch have seen an increase in the number of practicing veterinarians who are interested in veterinary telemedicine services since both online platforms started operations.
Spector said that on average, Dutch receives five applications a day of veterinarians wanting to practice on the platform.
Vetster currently has over 6,000 veterinarians registered online across all 50 states and recently expanded their services to the United Kingdom, Goodall said.
Vetster gives veterinarians the opportunity to use their services to expand in-person care online, as well as exclusively provide clients with telehealth services.
Photo by Vetster
“I think in many ways, it is because they want opportunities to work from home and set their own hours,” Spector said. “Veterinarians often work late into the night or during early morning hours and telemedicine allows them to have control over this.”
He also said these online platforms provide veterinarians the same security as animals receiving care in their homes, as these providers are often subjected to impatient clients amid increased wait times since the re-opening of in-person services.
“Just like we are seeing in a lot of other industries — like with people flying and flight attendants — clients who are coming in to see veterinarians can get very frustrated and over Zoom calls, veterinarians are provided with more personal safety,” Spector said.
As veterinary telehealth medicine continues to gain traction, Spector said the next move for the industry is to challenge the restrictive legislation in states like Texas in order for this care to be considered a viable option.
“Ultimately, my goal is to land veterinary telehealth medicine where human telehealth medicine is, as just another tool and option for access to care,” Spector said. “It really is just about how we can make veterinary care better for the pet, veterinarian and pet parent and telemedicine to me, is the obvious, easy win-win solution.”
