Desperation gripped Brenda Glenn. Caliber, her family’s big, goofy, six-year-old Labradoodle, was having another epileptic seizure — but this one happened on a night when the VCA All Pet Emergency Center was closed.
The local emergency clinic began closing two nights a week in August, attributing the closures to a shortage of veterinarians. h Startled to reach APEC’s voicemail and frantic because Caliber wasn’t snapping out of it this time, the Glenns dialed every veterinarian office they could until they finally tracked down a vet in Owensboro, Kentucky, who would agree to meet them.
But, lying in his blanket in the back seat of the car with Brenda by his side, Caliber died during the drive from Evansville to Owensboro. Two hours had passed since the dog’s seizure began. It happened in January, but Glenn still can’t talk about that night without crying.
“That’s the first time I’d ever even heard (APEC) were closed. I’d never had to use them before, but I thought I had the comfort of knowing they were always there and available,” she said.
Call it a veterinarian shortage or “an acute short-term tightening in the supply,” as the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) does — it’s not a new issue, and it’s not confined to APEC or to this area. But a lack of manpower is being acutely felt in Southwest Indiana veterinary settings ranging from small independent hospitals to APEC, the area’s only all-night emergency clinic.
The pinch affects services, leaving some veterinary offices to stop accepting new patients and others, like APEC, to curtail hours.
Citing “the national shortage of veterinarians,” low-cost walk-in clinic Fort Branch Veterinary Hospital announced on Facebook in December that it would begin making appointments three days a week and would offer its walk-in services on just two days. No doctors would be available on Wednesdays. Since then, the practice has several times announced closures or warned it is at full capacity.
Many of the Gibson County hospital’s supporters — pet owners willing to make the drive there and spend time on a waiting list in exchange for lower prices — have wished Fort Branch well and praised its services. Others are less willing to wait if they have to make appointment times. On Jan. 4, the day before it started taking clinic appointments, Fort Branch warned on Facebook that it was “still curbside and only have one doctor today and will only have one doctor tomorrow expect extra extra long wait times.”
One customer complained that she had made a 3:30 p.m. appointment and was still waiting to get in with her pet just before 6 p.m.
“They say they are down to one Dr. In my opinion they should have called and informed us,” she wrote. “We have been going there for over 50 yrs. Even my parents took their dogs there when I was a kid. It had always been wait your turn.”
Another client chimed in.
“Same here I even called to confirm my time at 330 for a 4 appointment. They told me yeah come on over. Only to find out they were hours behind,” she wrote.
Fort Branch Veterinary Hospital had an employee call the Courier & Press to decline to comment for this story, but the worker did confirm the manpower problems.
“We only have one full-time doctor, and we are running him ragged,” she said. “We’re short-staffed, period, because we’ve actually had a couple people that have left recently to go to other jobs.”
As she spoke, the woman told someone nearby she would be just a second.
“I’m sorry; I’m the only one at the desk today,” she said.
‘We believe in work-life balance’
The VCA All Pet Emergency Center (APEC) would not publicly address its closures or manpower shortages. But the Downtown Evansville hospital has cited “a national shortage of veterinarians” to explain why it still closes on Tuesday nights. It’s in APEC’s recorded message for callers.
APEC’s web site showed three veterinarians as of Friday afternoon. It did not differentiate between part-time and full-time doctors, but the practice has been advertising for a full-time emergency veterinarian for at least a month and possibly longer. The want ad hints at what might be going on with APEC’s veterinarians.
“At VCA All Pet Emergency Center, we believe in work-life balance,” it says. “Our rotating doctor schedule provides ample time off for pursuing outside interests or spending time with family and friends.”
To understand why APEC was closed the night Brenda Glenn desperately needed help for Caliber, you have to go back at least until last summer.
APEC’s August decision to begin closing two nights a week came shortly after the hospital’s longtime medical director, a full-time veterinarian, left the practice. That left just two veterinarians total, although the hospital added a third.
APEC hasn’t said whether it has hired another veterinarian beyond the three who appear on its website, but the clinic began opening on Wednesday nights again last week. It’s still closed Tuesdays.
Recruiting veterinarians? Sometimes it’s a matter of luck — and money
A local clinic’s success in recruiting vets can depend on finding natives who are motivated to live here.
Like Dr. Rita Johnson, an Evansville native who bought St. Joe Veterinary Hospital from its previous owner. Johnson worked at the practice even before going to veterinary college and ended up returning home to buy it after a stint in Louisville. St. Joe employs four veterinarians, including her, three of whom hail from Evansville. The fourth is a native of Henderson, Kentucky.
St. Joe has enough vets, Johnson said. The practice is short on veterinary technicians, which does force some staggering of schedules.
“I think we’ve gotten really lucky,” she said. “It is hard to recruit veterinarians. I’ve kind of always said, it’s almost like you have to find somebody from here that wants to come back here.”
But then, Johnson said, the recruiting problem is not unique to this area.
“Just in some other organizations I’m in across the country, like everyone is hiring for veterinarian right now, and no one can get applicants,” she said.
Dr. Tejal Rege, owner and sole veterinarian at Newburgh’s All Breed Pet Care, said he has advertised an opening for another vet in veterinary publications for years without getting so much as a nibble. Rege has owned his practice since 2007, having bought it from another vet with whom he worked.
Some local veterinary hospitals are corporate-owned and some family-owned with family members involved, Rege said, “but for a business owner like myself, it’s difficult to get somebody.”
“Nobody wants to come to this area,” Rege said as a cat loudly mewed in a nearby office. “’Most of the veterinarians want to go to big cities, big clinics with specialty stuff, rather than coming to a small place like this.”
Two years ago, AVMA published an estimate that specialty hospitals in areas such as Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago could offer a $150,000 salary. Rege estimated a new vet school graduate in this area, working at a small practice like his, could reasonably expect to make a maximum of $40,000-$45,000 plus benefits. Experienced vets, of course, could make significantly more.
Has Rege’s glaring vacancy affected services? Yeah. He said he stopped accepting new clients last week. The 55-hour weeks he was putting in couldn’t continue, he said.
Not all veterinarian jobs are performed in veterinary practices.
The Vanderburgh Humane Society last week posted an online want ad for a lead veterinarian to “perform daily exams, surgeries and oversite for our organization’s medical protocol.” The pay: $91,000 to $116,000 annually plus benefits, the promise of an eight-hour Monday- Friday day shift and a signing bonus.
Mesker Park Zoo posted an ad three weeks ago for a veterinarian to oversee care for the zoo’s animal collection. Advertised salary: $79,087 annually.
The median pay for veterinarians is on the rise. It was $95,460 in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and $99,250 in 2020.
Is there really a shortage of veterinarians?
The pool of licensed local veterinarians has grown in the past 10 years, even as local vets say the growth isn’t keeping up with demand and clients’ rising expectations.
Indiana Professional Licensing Agency data says there are 38 licensed individual veterinarians whose self-reported contact information includes a Vanderburgh County address. Warrick County has 22 licensed vets, Gibson nine and Posey seven.
Ten years ago, the numbers were Vanderburgh 27, Warrick 16, Gibson seven and Posey five. So the two largest counties, Vanderburgh and Warrick, have 60 licensed veterinarians between them now, compared to 43 a decade ago.
There is another measure, although it gives only a partial picture.
Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine — the only veterinary college in Indiana — said its 2021 doctor of veterinary medicine class includes 84 candidates. The class of 2020, which graduated last May, turned out 80 veterinarians.
It’s not necessary for local veterinarians to have studied at Purdue, although many — like Rita Johnson — did. There are 30 AVMA-accredited veterinary schools in the United States, many of them in the agriculture-oriented Midwest.
“Our target class size is right at about 84,” said Kevin Doerr, spokesman for Purdue’s veterinary college. “It’s a very sophisticated program, a very arduous program, and so it’s not something where we can just randomly and whimsically change the number of students that we’re enrolling.”
In an email message to the Courier & Press, the AVMA said “the evidence does not conclusively point to a labor shortage of veterinarians, especially in urban and companion animal medicine.”
“A broad view of the labor market points more towards an acute short-term tightening in the supply of veterinarians as opposed to a true chronic shortage,” AVMA said.
Among the factors pointing away from a true chronic shortage, AVMA cited stagnant growth in compensation, especially after accounting for inflation, declining productivity levels influenced by “alternative approaches to delivering veterinary care in the presence of COVID- 19” and uneven distribution of veterinarians across geographic regions.
Veterinarian pay is part of the problem, but just part of it
APEC’s want ad for a full-time emergency clinician doesn’t contain a salary range, but it does encourage “recent graduates and entry-level candidates” to apply. It also touts Evansville’s proximity to Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville and St. Louis.
Matt Salois, AVMA’s chief economist, told the Veterinary Information Network News Service last year that an employer who offered 1.5 times the average salary would have no problem finding good candidates for an emergency veterinarian job. But Salois acknowledged that’s not always possible.
“[T]hey can’t do that because they are constrained to offer a salary based on the additional revenue or income a veterinarian can provide,” he told VIN News. “That additional revenue/profitability is a function of the demand for veterinary services from the pet owner.”
Dr. Rita Johnson doesn’t think more money is a long-term answer.
“They’ll come for a while (for more money),” she said with a chuckle. “Potentially you could attract someone here. My opinion is, if they don’t have roots in this area or region, I think it is hard to keep them here. If they come, they’re getting some sort of experience, and then they’re moving on to a different situation.”
Local veterinary workers have chosen to serve community, vet tech says
Jessica Nagashima, a local veterinary technician, said she paid $40,000 for the schooling to get an associate of applied science in veterinary technology degree. And what she makes isn’t nearly enough to pay that off by herself.
“Luckily, I have a husband that’s a tattoo artist, and so we’re comfortable, and I can do what I love because of his cushion,” Nagashima said.
Nagashima grew up in Evansville. She’s been working in veterinary offices in one capacity or another since she was 18, and she’s 37 now.
Those who continue to work in the profession in their own communities have chosen to bypass better-paying opportunities in bigger cities to serve those communities, Nagashima said. It’s not easy.
“We’ll have three regular appointments and then, boom, first thing in the morning we’ll have emergency, emergency, emergency, and then we have drop-offs,” she said. “And then people call, and then they’re upset that we can’t get them in, and then they yell at us and they say that we don’t care about their animals.”
Nagashima paused. She wishes people would not refuse to pay the higher prices that emergency clinics command and then show up at other veterinarians’ doors expecting instant service. It’s just one of her gripes, but she said she loves the work.
“There’s only so much that we can physically and mentally do in a day to make sure that everybody is taken care of properly and that we’re doing it to the best of our abilities,” she said.
“It’s a wide range of things that we are doing for a very limited amount of pay.”