How Human Healthcare Can Help Shape the Future of Veterinary Medicine

At Mars Veterinary Health, our 70,000 pet-loving Associates are committed to advancing the veterinary profession to ensure a future in which people, pets, and the planet are thriving. To make such advancements, we can seek inspiration from human healthcare to help shape the future of veterinary medicine.

Human and veterinary healthcare professionals share a desire to provide high-quality medical care. Both are committed to continually improving, meeting the evolving needs of their patients, and tackling challenges affecting their teams.

With similar work environments and shared outcome aspirations, the veterinary profession can learn and borrow from several areas in which human medicine has made advancements:

· Exploring value-based care

· Fostering a culture of safety to promote continuous improvement

· Evolving the role of nurses

Value-Based Care

In a value-based care model, clinical teams focus on effectively and efficiently delivering the outcomes that matter most to the patient. Despite being a model that’s frequently reported on and largely seen as the future of human healthcare, it hasn’t fully gained traction in the human healthcare industry, due at least in part to the complexities stemming from the payer/provider model.

Fortunately, in the veterinary industry, we can hand pick what value-based care practices work in human medicine, and make them our own, less encumbered by some of the logistical challenges in human healthcare.

With so much variability in outcomes, value-based care aims to identify treatment pathways that provide value with little variability. The International Consortium on Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) created standard sets that measure a broad spectrum of outcomes.

Critical to these standard sets is the incorporation of the voice of the patient (or on our case, the pet owner). By doing so, it’s revealed that a host of other outcomes matter much more to patients that are unlikely to be understood when simply reviewing a medical record. Looking at this approach, it is imperative to bring the client’s voice into value-based veterinary care (VBVC) efforts.

Mars Veterinary Health is early in its efforts to integrate VBVC into practice, but we believe it has the potential to increase accessibility, strengthen client relations, and enable our veterinary teams to work more effectively together to improve meaningful patient outcomes.

Patient Safety

A report by the Institute of Medicine uncovered that, by and large, risks to patient safety are caused by flaws in the system, and individual healthcare workers are rarely solely to blame. Another reality, according to a practicing internist and Professor of Health Policy & Managements and Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, is that healthcare workers involved in medical errors can suffer emotional trauma, making them “second victims” who need support themselves following adverse events.

The veterinary profession is susceptible to the same systemic weaknesses that exist in human healthcare, and veterinary care providers are equally at risk for becoming “second victims” — when adverse events occur. In both human and pet healthcare, at the core of patient safety is a safe, supportive, and transparent culture.

Mars Veterinary Health looked to best practices in human healthcare when creating our Quality Foundations Guide, which is available to our Associates as a resource for designing quality programs that aim to optimize outcomes for pets. Developed by veterinary leaders who oversee medical quality programs within Mars Veterinary Health and our family of practices, it offers background information and tools that can be used to look at systems when errors occur, build in defenses to prevent future errors, and support the veterinary teams impacted by adverse events. Examples from the guide are shared in our Mars Veterinary Health Patient Safety Summit speaker sessions, found here.

Expanding Roles for Technicians & Nurses

The pandemic-inspired surge in pet adoptions over the last two years has resulted in unprecedented caseloads for veterinary teams. While it is incredible that pets are finding loving homes, and more people are experiencing the joys of pet ownership, the increased demand for veterinary care is creating challenges for the veterinary profession. At current course and speed, a Banfield Pet Hospital study estimates 75 million pets in the U.S. could be without the veterinary care they need by 2030, in part due to a shortage of veterinary professionals to handle the demand. Yes, we need to increase the pipeline of veterinarians, but arguably just as important is expanding the roles of other veterinary team members.

Here again, the veterinary medicine field can look to human healthcare as a model. The nurse practitioner (NP) role emerged in the U.S. in the 1960s, in response to America’s changing healthcare needs. Nurses saw an expansion of their role as the best way to deliver care to underserved and vulnerable populations. As a result, educational programs were created, and advanced degrees were offered. Over the last 50 years, the nurse practitioner role has continued to evolve, with research showing they deliver both quality care and high levels of patient satisfaction.

The Veterinary Innovation Council, a collaborative, industry-wide initiative focused on leading innovation in global animal health, is currently prioritizing working to expand the career path and scope of responsibilities for individuals who pursue careers as veterinary technicians. Recently, Lincoln Memorial University College of Veterinary Medicine announced plans for a Master of Veterinary Clinical Care degree program, with a tentative start date of August 2022, so it’s encouraging to see wheels are in motion.

Just as nurse practitioners have added value in human healthcare, up-leveled roles for veterinary technicians have the potential to provide much-needed relief on individual workloads, more rewarding careers for the entire veterinary team as everyone practices at the top of their licenses, and ultimately, better care for pets.

Looking Ahead

These areas of human health, among others, can serve as an inspiration for advancements in the veterinary profession. With a shared goal to provide quality care to the people and pets they serve, there is so much for veterinary professionals to learn from human medicine to evolve pet care long into the future.