If you’ve taken an animal to a veterinarian in Colorado recently, you know that medical care for pets isn’t cheap. Even a routine checkup for vaccines, heartworm prevention, and diet recommendations can cost a couple of hundred dollars, and any medical procedure starts at $1,000 and can reach $10,000 quickly.
A ballot measure could help or at least help prevent care from getting more expensive. Proposition 129 would create a master’s degree program to train a new level of care provider between technicians and doctors – a veterinary professional associate or VPA – who could perform surgeries, provide care, and perform other important tasks.
Most veterinarians work hard to keep their prices affordable, but the Denver Dumb Friends League – one of the most trusted animal shelters in the state — and Colorado State University – our agricultural higher education hub – have teamed up to find ways to keep prices down.
The Dumb Friends League knows first-hand how many animals get surrendered or euthanized every year because a life-saving procedure is too expensive or an animal’s quality of life has deteriorated too far and the surgery would cost thousands of dollars to repair ligaments or remove bone spurs.
Colorado State University runs the state’s largest veterinarian college and is fighting to keep the state supplied with enough doctorates of veterinarian medicine to meet demand.
But Colorado is a pet-loving state, and there is a shortage of vets.
So the Dumb Friends League and CSU brought us Proposition 129. It changes state law and directs the State Board of Veterinary Medicine to create a licensing process for a two-year master’s program for veterinary professional associates.
These VPAs once licensed by the state will be able to perform almost all of the same duties as a doctor of veterinary medicine under the doctor’s supervision.
The language of the ballot measure limits the VPA’s work to what they were trained in school to do and what the licensed veterinarian assigns them to perform. The state board will create credentialing requirements for schools, and we urge them not to allow programs to be primarily conducted online. Physician assistants for human care — a master’s degree program — spend long hours in clinical care seeing patients and getting hands-on experience diagnosing and developing treatment plans. VPAs must get the same hands-on training with animals.
There will be a licensing test and required ongoing professional development.
We understand the concern from veterinarians across the state that this change could lead to substandard care. No one wants hurriedly trained employees working with animals. Large vet chains, including some who have donated money to help put this on the ballot, may abuse these new employees setting up teams of VPAs working under the supervision of a single veterinarian who doesn’t have time to ensure quality of care. There is no guarantee that any savings realized by hiring fewer doctorates in veterinary care would be passed along to pet owners.
The issue is being framed by the American Veterinary Medical Association — which opposes the measure — as a choice between substandard care and the status quo.
But for many Coloradans today the status quo is prohibitively expensive and the choice often is not seeking any medical care for their animals. The risk of poorly trained VPAs or large chain veterinary hospitals abusing the intent of the law is worth the potential outcome of more Colorado pets receiving medical care when needed because it is readily available and more affordable.
Just as humans seek care from PAs who received master’s degrees, so too pets should be able to get care from VPAs with master’s degrees.
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