Don’t be surprised if in a few years you find yourself standing behind a chocolate lab, Scottish fold, or guinea pig when you buy cold medicine at the pharmacy.
Competition watchdogs say the distribution of pet medicines could be expanded beyond veterinary clinics, with the Competition Authority claiming it could help curb the soaring cost of pet care. That will happen.
“This issue is extremely important to Canadians because it impacts both Canadians’ wallets and the health of their pets,” said one of the researchers leading the Competition Bureau’s efforts to expand the distribution of pet medicines. says Yusef Jin.
The cost of owning a pet has ballooned in recent years, Zine et al. pointed out in their paper. Reports published this week. Canadian households will spend a total of about $7.4 billion on pet food and medicine in 2022, up from $5.7 billion in 2019, according to Statistics Canada data.
For the average household, the cost of owning a single dog or cat can run into the thousands of dollars per year.
The Competition Bureau said inflation and a shortage of veterinarians are contributing to higher prices for pet owners, but so is a lack of competitiveness in the industry.
Jin argues that pet parents can save money by disrupting the current model in which most pet medicines flow directly from manufacturer to distributor to prescribing veterinarian.
“In our view, this lack of market competition leads to higher prices and limited options, making it difficult for pet owners to find affordable and convenient options for their pet’s prescriptions.” he told Global News.
What is the proposed solution?Have the pet parent bring the specific prescription from the veterinarian and have it filled at the local pharmacy.
How will pet care change?
It’s a model already in place in Quebec after the province’s pharmacist association successfully lobbied for access to a national distributor of pet medicines. Pet prescriptions are also available on a limited basis at some specialty pharmacies in Ontario.
Justin Bates, CEO of the Ontario Pharmacists Association, says this is a model that makes sense to him. The freedom to choose where to receive prescriptions for human medicines is a “central tenet” of Canada’s health care system, he told Global News.
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“I think the same principles apply to consumers when it comes to medicating their pets and understanding that they have options,” he says.
Dr. Tim Arthur, president of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and an Ottawa veterinarian himself, told Global News that expanding pet medicine to community pharmacies is “a new concept for the average veterinarian.” However, he said he also sees some possible benefits. It depends on how the models are integrated.
First, separating veterinarian and pharmacy visits is important in remote and rural areas where veterinarian visits may require driving for hours, even in remote and rural areas. For Canadians living in communities, this could be a game-changer.
Arthur said in situations where pet problems can be diagnosed via telemedicine, owners can have their prescriptions filled at a local pharmacy instead of having the medication shipped to them, which adds cost and processing delays. .
“I think access to treatment will improve if veterinary medicines are available through human pharmacies,” Arthur says.
But they also have concerns about the quality of care for Canada’s furry friends if prescription filling is routinely taken out of veterinarians’ hands.
He points out that pharmacists don’t understand animal physiology in the same way as human patients, which can affect the checks and balances that need to be built into the system.
If a doctor prescribes a dose of a drug but overlooks interactions with other drugs or overprescribes, a pharmacist can spot it.
Similarly, Arthur said that if he prescribed acetaminophen for a cat, the technician in his office would likely ask if he meant to write aspirin instead, since aspirin is toxic to kittens. states.
“And I say, ‘Thank God I caught it,'” Arthur says. “If I sent the same script to a pharmacist, they wouldn’t understand it at all. And that worries me.”
Bates acknowledges that expanding pet drug distribution into the pharmacy channel requires an educational component. With these resources and additional training available, he expects such changes to occur in the coming years, giving pharmacists time to prepare for broader deployment.
Such drug distribution changes would need to be legislated at the state and territory level.
Despite recent moves in Ontario to expand the role of pharmacists, such as giving pharmacists the power to write prescriptions for a growing number of minor and common ailments, Bates said the OPA He said he supports the change and doesn’t believe it will happen. It puts a huge burden on the system.
“We are well equipped to take on additional tasks,” he says. “It’s just a matter of managing demand.”
Extending pet drug distribution to pharmacies won’t make life easier for veterinarians, who already face financial strain, Arthur argues.
The software used in veterinarian offices to write and fill prescriptions is streamlined for a single distribution channel. If prescriptions are filled elsewhere, veterans would have to print, fax and rescan the file to keep their records up to date, Arthur said.
As for pricing, Arthur said he believes there is potential to reduce the cost of the drug itself.
If this model is implemented similar to how human medicine works in Ontario pharmacies, there will be a limit to how much pharmacists can mark up a single product, resulting in savings for the end consumer. Possibly, Arthur says.
However, she added, convenience comes at the expense of having to make multiple trips back and forth between veterinarians and pharmacies.
Arthur said pharmaceuticals are certainly a “profit center” for veterinarians, but at nearly 10 percent of veterinarians’ income, they’re not that big of a deal. However, there is a risk to that bottom line when VA is suffering from labor shortages and paying significant costs to acquire and retain staff on top of inflationary factors in other parts of the industry.
“We’re already under significant financial strain, and what we really need to avoid is losing 10 percent of our potential profits and still trying to make ends meet.” Arthur says.
If that source of income is reduced or completely taken away, veterans may be forced to raise costs on other services to make up the difference, he said. And pet parents will be burdened with both rising veterinary fees and drug costs at local pharmacies, he argues.
“That money has to be made up somewhere,” Arthur says. “So there is an external possibility that costs will actually increase.”
And while access to care may improve for people living in remote areas under this model, Arthur argues that there are some cases where the opposite is true.
If you live in a small town and have your prescriptions filled at a pharmacy instead of going to the vet, that veterinarian might have a harder time running a business in a small area when they could make more money in the city. You may decide it’s not worth it.
“And that’s not good for anyone,” says Arthur.
Mr Zain said the aim of the Competition Bureau’s report was not to “replace veterinarians”, but to give consumers more choice in the current system and, hopefully, be better for pet parents and their furry family members. He said he hopes it will lead to results.
“We understand how important veterinarians are to the health of pets,” he says. “We believe that through competition, consumers benefit not only in convenience but also in price.”
