Vets Fare Relatively Well During Current Credit Pinch

Vets Fare Relatively Well During Current Credit Pinch
By Jessica Tremayne
Reprinted from Veterinary Practice News

Despite the upheaval in the U.S. financial landscape, veterinarians remain one of the top three most reliable professions to lend to, joining dentists and physicians.

Experts say the availability of veterinary business loans has stayed stable as well.

Working off the concern of member veterinarians, the American Animal Hospital Assn. conducted a study of the economic impact on practice revenues.

Of the veterinarians polled, 93 percent said they were working off of actual data as opposed to a gut feeling. Fifty-six percent reported a revenue increase in the first six months of 2008 compared to 2007, while 28.4 percent said their revenue had fallen.

About 79 percent of those polled in the AAHA Rocky Mountain Market Research survey said they do not anticipate a decrease in total revenue in the last six months of 2008.

“We had received a number of inquiries, both from the media and from companies in the animal health industry, asking whether economic conditions had resulted in pet owners seeking less veterinary care for their pets,” says John W. Albers, DVM, executive director of the AAHA. “We only had anecdotal information, so we conducted the study.”

Although results may vary by region, the profession’s integrity has remained intact, veterinary lenders report.

Pet Owners Wary
Practitioners’ financial concerns are valid, considering that 68 percent of pet owners polled last December for a pet-spending survey said they believed their finances would be the same or worse in 2008 compared to 2007. The Fleishman Hilliard International Communications survey of 665 pet owners was initiated to obtain a better understanding of the ideology of the pet-owning population in trying economic times. read more