The Changing Face of Family Medicine

It has been a long time in the making, but we have officially kicked off a new phase to our hospital. We call it a family medicine service or a wellness clinic. The focus of VCS Pets First is to provide the routine, day to day, veterinary care that all pets need within a facility that houses an emergency service , a specialty hospital and hopefully, in the future, many other pet orientated services. This gives the client and the pets access to some incredibly skilled individuals, both doctors and staff, as well as access to the hospital 24/7 and all of its advanced equipment.
What is really exciting about developing this service now, are the chages that are occuring within our industry. We are setting the foundations for a service at the same time that our profession is realizing that vaccines are not necessary every year or even every other year. We are starting to see that the annual visit should be a time to focus on wellness, physical examinations, early diagnosis of health issues and, in general, preventative medicine that really, only includes vaccines as a minor aspect of patient care. This is exciting to me because I have always felt that we as a profession had made a fatal error in trying to use vaccines and dispensing drugs as the focal point of general practice and its revenue. Veterinarians are so much more than administrators of shots and drugs and we had been, in my etimation, selling ourselves short.
I recently had an opportunity to attend a lecture about vaccine protocols in veterinary medicine. It was great to hear that our professional organizations like ACVIM, AAHA and even the drug companies are recommending vaccines every 3 years after the 1 year -old cat or dog receives its booster and that after 7 years of age our cats and dogs may only need a rabies vaccine every 3 years. It is quite possible that we will learn over the next few years that we will extend the interval between vaccines even further.
Don't think that that means your pet should visit the veterinarian less often though, its those regular visits and examinations that will keep you pet healthy and make you aware of health issues that you might not have noticed if it were not for t he annual wellness examination with your family veterinarian.