Why Has Veterinary Care Become so Expensive? A slippery slope!
Only you can set your budget and know what you value. My approach to health is proactive and participatory; I am an honored guide sitting alongside you in the drivers seat. To work with me, you are invited to invest time and it will be time well spent because it will pay dividends into the future, just like an education does. The current model of healthcare is to turn all your power over to the doctor or veterinarian and have him or her tell you what to do and you pay for a quick fix that often will actually cost more in the future in time and money to get back on course of health for your animal.
A proactive and preventative lifestyle is what I value and love; it is too disappointing and draining to run around in chaos and drama putting out fires all the time. (Especially when those fires could have been prevented.) Those are my values. And my practice philosophy, “More skills, less pills.”
Another important value for me is root cause medicine. It is so much more cost effective to gather appropriate information from testing and then use the best available tools to correct or influence the underlying problem or trigger than to use the shot gun approach of throwing more natural tools at symptoms and hoping for the best. If we decide to use that approach, it is at least, a well informed choice to the potential long term cost in relation to the immediate lesser cost.
Thus every action plan that we create is created from informed choices. I value your well earned money and will always offer the integrity and transparency of the pros and cons of options, costs and honor what suits your family best. I will also hold integrity to my standard of care and let you know when it may be better to bring another veterinarian on the team for a particular service.
Sometimes a pill for an ill is appropriate and is often more cost effective in the short term up front. If this is of the utmost priority to you, then we may not be the best match.
I would love to share the full article of Dr. Becker’s post below. I hope that I have answered an important point of the article: in speaking to choosing the veterinarian for your animals’ healthcare; ‘Ideally, his or her approach to keeping your pet healthy will mirror your own.’
If more skills, time invested value and a high regard for education is an approach that you are interested in, then let’s connect on your health journey for your animal.