Welcome to The Bird Bath, a weekly news podcast. Join our host, Ryan Leech, as he highlights the latest news and trends in the evolving world of pet health. Stay tuned!
You're listening to the Birdbath presented by the Fountain Report. I'm your host, Ryan Leech. Welcome back to the bird bath. Each week, we scrape the surface of the news you need to know, so let's get into it. Our top story this week is a very impactful statement from the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges.
Ryan Leech:The AAVMC has released their statement on the US veterinary workforce. In the statement, they opened by saying significant shortages of veterinarians exist across all sectors of professional activity and at all levels of specialization. Although precise numbers are difficult to quantify and specific predictions about future needs are subject to interpretation, the available evidence indicates that these shortages are a result of systematic, long term trends in pet ownership and demand for veterinary services, along with limited capacity for training veterinary professionals and are expected to continue unless the veterinary medical profession takes action. Now this is a pretty big statement from the AAVMC because they are one of the groups that a lot of people are looking to and relying on as the potential solution to the veterinary shortage that quite a few different people in the space believe is happening or is coming soon. Now the AAVMC went on to outline the increases in demand and supply restrictions.
Ryan Leech:And in their outline, they said that since 2007, the number of US veterinarians has been increasing at a rate of only 2.7% each year, and a substantial shortage exists today. In 2019, there were 2 20 to 30% of US veterinarians every year have expressed a desire to work fewer hours even if that meant lower compensation. Make sure we link, but they show it require 4 to 6000 additional full time veterinarians to fully meet the desire for the people that want to work less. There's always a common conversation in many circles when people discuss this about if there's a need to be able to increase the skill sets or the available workload of non veterinary staff or if credentialed veterinary nurses, technicians, or or mid level practitioners are able to be introduced into the market. But the AAVMC says, however, analysis of the US market indicates that over 50,000 additional I wanna thank often we talk about the shortage of veterinarians, but I think that anytime that you hear that, your brain needs to say the shortage of veterinarians and veterinary technicians.
Ryan Leech:Because for every veterinarian that you're looking to add, you're looking to need 3 to 5 and upwards, sometimes to 7 technicians or other people in the clinic supporting that workload. So a shortage of 4, 5, 6, 10000 veterinarians is going to need 30, 40, 50, 60,000 additional people to be able to work on that support side of things. The data that the AAVMC cited says that it takes 30 years of the graduates at current training capacity to meet projected needs in 2030. So they're saying it's not an immediate solution, and it's something that we can't just expect to be churning out this, highly skilled workforce. The implications that were outlined in the study, I I thought it was interesting.
Ryan Leech:When they when they put out their statement, they talk the issues. They talk about the actions, the supply, the demand. But the the implications that they hit on were an increased mortality of the animals, increase of zoonotic diseases, and also a a larger gap in the already spread out access to care and issues around access to care that we're seeing in 2024 already. The actions that they discussed, which, again, thank you for to the AAVMC for coming up with actions and things that we can do. But they're saying we can look at increasing, student enrollment.
Ryan Leech:But, again, a lot of the universities are already at capacity. We're adding new universities. But, as we saw in in recent studies here, even the the new university in Puerto Rico may be priced out of the market for a lot of people that were expecting to be going there. We also saw that Arizona was not having the NAVLE results that that people were expecting for new graduates there. But increasing education models, increasing the capacity to train the nurses and technicians, so adding additional associates and bachelor degrees as well as veterinary technician specialist programs, the opportunity perhaps to enhance the effectiveness of veterinary health care teams.
Ryan Leech:So utilizing technology or not expecting that one full time veterinarian's work today has to be equal to what one full time's veterinarian's work, 3, 5, 7 years from now should look like. Encouraging veterinarians to choose careers that can perhaps help with this access to care or finding those underserved populations and utilizing innovative technologies and business models to allow an increase of the economic stability of serving those markets. More training capacity, more alternative training opportunities. And then also the the final thing they hit on was developing an ongoing research initiative focused on the veterinary workforce with initial emphasis on efficiency of health care delivery as it relates to staffing, workflow, turnover, and attrition or retention, in addition to develop a better understanding of demand for veterinary medical services that enable robust projections of workforce needs. So kind of a bombshell topic.
Ryan Leech:I know it's it's a longer story than what we usually hit on, but it's one that was pretty big, I think. It's kind of like the the group that you were hoping was going to be the ones perhaps in the corner of many people that were looking for a potential solution to the workforce shortage just raised their hand and said, hey. It's here. Something we're concerned about, and it's something that we're expecting other people to be able to join in and participate in trying to solve. So very interesting there.
Ryan Leech:Again, we'll make sure we'd link the, full statement as well as the report in the show notes. Another big research piece that came out was David Sprinkle's pet market trend watch. It looks over all of the megatrends in the pet industry, and it contrasts the differences of of large swaths of data, but from 2013 through 2018 against 2019 to 2023. So not just these snapshots that have major COVID implications, but also larger scale, more thought out time period. So what the pet market trend watch showed was that while national population growth and pet population growth patterns were in line a decade ago, they flipped in the last year.
Ryan Leech:The US households are up, but the pet owning households are down. So it's interesting. We're talking all all the time, and maybe we're a little focused on it ourselves, but but people are always talking about the human animal bond. But we are seeing fewer households owning pets. Now the members of Gen z are entering into the pet market consumer base.
Ryan Leech:And at the same time, we saw a drop of the pet owning households. So the older generations perhaps are now at the point where they're aging out of having their pets. And Gen z are in tighter financial strains and and maybe are making different financial decisions around pet ownership. From the data that David looked at from 2013 to 2018 from 20 and then the contrast and comparison from the 2019 to 23, one of the sort of the final findings there that David had was that in the current economy, veterinary service providers need to focus on not only affordability but payability. So, again, we're you know, we sound like a broken record sometimes, but talking about the access to care or the ability for people to be able to afford the care or the ability to find ways for them to pay for the care, whether it's within their budget or finding new ways to find budget to take care of their animals.
Ryan Leech:So big reports from David. Make sure you check it out. It's all highlighted in the fountain report. The American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine has revised their statements on leptospirosis. They've actually they've updated their guidelines and now recommend that all dogs be vaccinated annually rather than every 3 years because they saw an increase in the prevalence of dogs from small breeds in urban areas, puppies, geriatric dogs, dogs in rural areas, and a lot of dogs just across the board that have not been adequately vaccinated are starting to increase the risk of leptospirosis and and are needing to increase the opportunity for people to be able to have these vaccines.
Ryan Leech:The main takeaway that I saw when reading this report from them was that the guidance on the vaccine protocols not only is important for the animals, but also very important for protecting veterinary staff. And they're recommending that people change these protocols from an annual versus in every 3 years. So if you are managing your reminders in a clinic or if you're thinking about ways to find that recurrence of revenue or projections within the vaccine schedules that you're doing within clinic or if you're looking at the industry as a whole. Leptospirosis is something that we're seeing a rise in and that we're seeing a desire for people, especially from the ACVIM, to increase the number of pets that are being vaccinated to an annual basis. An important deadline coming up for any new companies or emerging companies in the space, April 1st, one week from now, is the emerging company application deadline for the KC animal health corridor.
Ryan Leech:They're finalizing their applications, and they're going to have their animal health summit in August. So the summit is one of the only opportunities in the world for early stage companies in the animal health and nutrition sectors to present their vision, business plan, and technology to potential investors. If you're a company seeking between 500,000 to up to $20,000,000 funding with strategic partners or looking for ways to advance your company's technology, it's definitely something that you should check out. We'll make sure there's a link in the bio. Applications, again, are due by April 1st.
Ryan Leech:It's a really cool group. We talked about it a couple weeks ago, but the KC animal health corridor brings a massive amount of people, not just from the veterinary side of things or the companion animal side of things, but the pet care versus vet care as well as agriculture all the way across all animal care. So make sure you check it out. Finally, if you want to be on the absolute cutting edge of what is happening in artificial intelligence, make your way to Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine, April 19th to 21st. They are hosting their 1st symposium on artificial intelligence in veterinary medicine.
Ryan Leech:We're just a month out from this. And what they're saying is that this groundbreaking event will bring together AI researchers, industry pioneers, and thought leaders dedicated to bridging the gap between academic theory and practical application in veterinary AI. The symposium is gonna have workshops, keynotes, presentations, panel discussions, and a lot of incredible, incredible people. One of the organizers, doctor Parminder Basran, I had the incredible opportunity to share the the stage with him at a Bond vet more than medicine conference, as well have had been absolutely blown away by the depth of knowledge of what he brings. So if there's even a sliver of the knowledge that you can get from doctor Basran, I think that he's 10 to 15 years ahead of where the rest of us are when we're thinking about AI.
Ryan Leech:So if you haven't booked your tickets, make sure to make your way up to Ithaca, New York, April 19th to 21st. It's gonna be something incredible. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the team from Cornell has to bring. Finally, for more on these and other stories, join us by subscribing to the fountain report. There's a link in the bio.
Ryan Leech:And don't miss out on any episodes by subscribing and rating the show. For the birdbath, I'm Ryan. See you next week.