407 - The Dangers of Dutch

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast

Episode 407 – The Dangers of Dutch

Host: Dr. Andy Roark
Guest: Dr. Matt Salois (Economist, President of VMG, Adjunct Faculty at Cornell)
Date: July 9, 2026

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Overview

This episode tackles the growing influence and risks of Dutch Pet—a veterinary telemedicine company—on veterinary care standards, economics, and patient safety. Dr. Roark interviews Dr. Matt Salois, who recently published an article in Today's Veterinary Business titled “The Dangers of Dutch Pet’s Veterinary Telemedicine Advocacy.” Together, they scrutinize Dutch's business model through the metaphor of the Trojan horse, probe into the redefining (and undermining) of standard of care, and discuss broader industry impacts, from cost inflation to risk and liability.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Trojan Horse Metaphor – Innovation or Infiltration?

• Trojan Horse Analogy (04:33–06:14)
  • Dr. Salois likens Dutch Pet’s seemingly benevolent innovation to the legendary hollow horse, which appeared as a gift but allowed the Greeks to infiltrate Troy:

    “The Trojan horse didn’t look dangerous, it looked helpful. And that’s where I think veterinary medicine is right now… almost anything that feels like relief starts to look like a good idea.” (06:14 – Dr. Salois)

  • The temptation to embrace Dutch is strongest in an environment where practices, pet owners, and the profession at large feel overwhelmed by cost and access pressures.

2. Standard of Care Under Threat

• Undermining Standards (07:01–09:37)
  • The notion of “standard of care” is being reframed and attacked. Dr. Roark warns:

    “I really believe... the whole idea of a standard of care is under attack and being undermined.” (07:01 – Dr. Roark)

  • Dr. Salois agrees, viewing current pressure as an “assault.” The worry is that business models prioritizing convenience or profitability could blur essential lines between competent medicine and quackery:

    “The danger isn’t change. It’s mistaking dismantling for progress.” (08:20 – Dr. Salois)

  • Removing protective protocols (like VCPR and physical exams) is likened to removing doors from a house—making things easier, but introducing greater risks.

3. Economic Repercussions of Dutch’s Business Model

• Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (10:20–15:06)
  • Dr. Roark theorizes that as Dutch siphons profit centers (like pharmacy sales) from practices, the cost of complex interventions (e.g., surgeries) will rise for pet owners in need:

    “Are we robbing Peter to pay Paul? ... The more of these profit centers that get removed from vet practices, the less subsidy things like surgery and advanced care get.” (11:33 – Dr. Roark)

  • Dr. Salois compares pharmacy margins to restaurant drink sales—without them, the economic model falters:

    “You take away the pharmacy margin, you don’t make care cheaper, you make it more fragile.” (13:05 – Dr. Salois)

4. Dutch: Not a Nonprofit Savior

• Profit-Driven Intentions (15:06–16:22)
  • Dutch is painted as a for-profit (venture-backed) company, not a nonprofit revolutionizing care. Dr. Salois critiques their marketing:

    “If you have to make the entire system look like a scam to justify your solution, it’s usually worth a second look.” (16:22 – Dr. Salois)

  • Dutch’s advocacy often involves “throwing veterinary practices under the bus,” which sows distrust and distorts the true nature of most practices (which are small, local businesses, not profiteering giants).

5. Removing Friction vs. Increasing Risk

• Physical Exams and Safeguards (18:48–20:28)
  • Dr. Salois distinguishes between removing friction (making things easier) and removing risk (making things less safe):

    “Friction and risk are not the same thing … Removing friction is not the same thing as removing risk.” (20:22–20:28 – Dr. Salois)

  • The physical exam is stressed as absolutely essential, not an arbitrary bureaucratic obstacle.

6. Delayed Diagnosis and Higher Costs

• Clinical Consequences (20:28–24:35)
  • Dr. Roark brings up real examples where remote-only care has led to missed or delayed diagnoses—escalating costs and suffering:

    “When you’re wrong, the cost is—it is enormous.” (21:12 – Dr. Roark)

  • Cases presenting to traditional clinics tend to be more advanced and expensive to treat due to delays caused by remote mismanagement.

7. Diffused Accountability

• Who Bears the Risk? (21:12–22:53)
  • There are major legal and ethical issues around liability; pets are considered property, damages in lawsuits are limited, and with many remote vets working as independent contractors, accountability is scattered.

  “This isn’t just a risk to veterinarians. It’s a risk to the pets and the people who love them.” (22:19 – Dr. Salois)

8. Systemic Risks and Subtle Erosion

• Incremental Erosion of Care (24:35–26:20)
  • Dr. Salois warns that systems generally fail not from a dramatic breach but from incremental, uncaught changes:

    “Systems don’t usually break because something crashes through the walls... it breaks because there’s a repeated pattern that doesn’t get corrected over time.” (25:40 – Dr. Salois)

  • The loss of safeguards like VCPR and physical exams is akin to “texting someone your alarm code.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Trojan Horse Warning

  “The danger isn’t change. It’s mistaking dismantling for progress.” (08:20 – Dr. Matt Salois)

• Standard of Care as a Line in the Sand

  “The standard of care for me is what is acceptable medicine and what is quackery and what is dangerous for the patients.” (07:02 – Dr. Andy Roark)

• Economic Analogy

  “The margins on drinks are what allow them to keep the kitchen staffed and the menu reasonably priced. Now imagine someone... taking all the drinks out ... and selling them somewhere else.” (13:05 – Dr. Matt Salois)

• On Liability

  “If someone makes a bad medical decision, the patient doesn’t get a redo. The pet owner doesn’t get that moment back.” (22:19 – Dr. Matt Salois)

• On Physical Exams

  “If pets could talk, this whole conversation would be different ... patients don’t speak and that’s why the physical exam matters.” (18:56 – Dr. Matt Salois)

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Important Timestamps

• 04:33 — Introduction of Dutch as a “Trojan horse” by Dr. Salois
• 07:01 — Roark and Salois on the assault on standard of care
• 11:33 — Discussion of economic impact and cost transfer
• 13:05 — Restaurant analogy and pharmacy revenue
• 15:06 — Dutch’s for-profit nature and customer trust
• 18:56 — The irreplaceable importance of the physical exam
• 20:28 — Real-world misdiagnosis stories from telemedicine
• 22:19 — Who bears risk in the new model?
• 24:35 — Sicker pets presenting later due to remote management

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Where to Find Dr. Matt Salois

• Writing: Occasional articles for Today’s Veterinary Business
• Social: Active on LinkedIn (weekly posts)
• Email: [e-mail]

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Tone and Language

The episode is a candid, at times fiery, back-and-forth that blends relatable analogies with real-world clinical and economic insights. Dr. Roark brings curiosity and (self-admitted) skepticism; Dr. Salois provides data-driven, cautious advocacy for core veterinary values. The conversation is both rigorous and accessible, peppered with humor, metaphors, and a persistent call for thoughtful progress rather than careless disruption.

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For those concerned about the future of veterinary care, this episode is a must-listen for understanding both the promise and peril of disruptive models like Dutch—and why “progress” should not come at the cost of patient safety and professional integrity.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

To the cone of Shame veterinary podcast, I am your host, Dr. Andy Rourkeys. I got a bit of a spicy one today. We're talking about Dutch. We're talking about Dutch pet and the idea of the Trojan horse. I've got Dr. Matt Soloy with me today and he wrote a really nice article in today's Veteran Business. And basically he's like, hey, look, the standards of care that we have in place to protect pets are there for a reason. And anybody, anytime someone comes to you and says, hey, I've got this wonderful gift for you, no strings attached, it's going to make life so much easier and it's going to take care of that cost of care problem. All you have to do is open the gates and reduce your restrictions, let down your restrictions and we will make all of your problems go away. You need to be skeptical. And so we talk a bit about that. We talk about what really happens when Dutch rolls in. We talk about concerns that I have about Dutch driving up the cost of care for our pets that need care the most. And so we get into that a little bit and kind of what that looks like. And so anyway, it's a really interesting discussion about Dutch specifically and how our practice works and the economics of our, of our practices and the impacts that having this type of path to care with no regulations, no physical examinations, things like that, about what the ramifications of that type of a setup in our profession would be and what the cost would be. And so I think that they would be substantial. I think Matt sort of agrees. And so anyway, we get into that quite a bit. So guys, I hope you enjoy this episode. Let's get into it.

[C]

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[D]

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[C]

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[B]

This is your show.

[C]

We're glad you're here. We want to help you in your veterinary care. Welcome to the cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.

[B]

Welcome back to the podcast. Dr. Matt Soloy. How are you, my friend?

[D]

Hey, Andy. Good to see you again. I'm doing great. How are you?

[B]

I'm doing really great. It's always good to have you here. For those who don't know you, you are an economist. You are the president of the vmg, the Veterinary Management Groups. And congratulations. I saw recently you have joined the faculty as an adjunct faculty member at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine. Tell me a little bit about that.

[D]

Ye. Thanks. I'm hugely honored and grateful. And I'll be working with the center for Veterinary Business and Entrepreneurship. They focus on the economics and business aspects of veterinary medicine, so right up my alley. And they're really trying to, I think, bring a business acumen into veterinary medicine, in particular with young emerging leaders. And so we need that now more than ever.

[B]

Yes, now more than ever.

[D]

Yeah. So just hugely excited. Thanks for mentioning that.

[B]

Oh, man, I think that's awesome. I think that's such. I love working with the vet students. They just make me happy. I wanted to. To have you on today because you have an article that came out in today's veterinary business called the Dangers of Dutch Pets. Veterinary Telemedicine Advocacy. Yeah, and so bold title. And then you go on and one of the things I really like in your writing, you do a really good job of pulling in sort of other stories and metaphors to kind of illustrate your points. And so you talk in this article about your Trojan horse metaphor, which I thought was so spot on. I really like the way that you laid that out. So let me step back here. Go ahead and lay out for me sort of the position, the dangers of Dutch and, and the Trojan horse. Can you kind of lay down what, what you're looking at there?

[D]

Yeah, you bet. And so I've been thinking about this for a while as part of my advocacy efforts with, with bmg. But I got to say, it really started to pick up new speed when that podcast came out earlier this year. Tucker Carlson had the. The head of Dutch pet, Joe Spector on. And I gotta say that, you know, first thing you know, after watching that podcast, I actually agree with a lot of the frustration that came out on that. You know, a lot of conversations on cost of care, access, consolidation, and those are. Those are real pressures. So I don't. I don't really part ways with them on the diagnosis, where. Where I really part ways was on the treatment and the proposed solution. Because to me, this. This issue, and we'll come back to this, it's not. It's not innovation. It's what we're. What I'm seeing, what we're trading away to get it. And so the way I've been thinking about this was through the Trojan horse analogy. I think we all know the story from school. And the point I kept coming back to is if the Greeks had rolled up to Troy with a giant flaming battering ram, nobody's letting that in. Right. The story would stop there. Everyone sees the threat if that was the case. But that's not what they did. They showed up with a gift free horse. Looks helpful. It looks like the end of a problem that everyone was tired of dealing with. The war in Troy had raged for years and years, and they just basically wanted it to go away. And that, to me is the whole point is the Trojan horse didn't look dangerous, it looked helpful. And that's where I think veterinary medicine is right now. People are tired, practices are tired, pet owners are tired. They feel the cost pressure. And when you're in that kind of environment, almost anything that feels like relief starts to look like a good idea.

[B]

Yes. I really love that, that part of the story, when you laid it out like, I thought you emphasized that really well. It was the relief. It was. Everybody wanted this to be the answer. Everybody wanted to be like, oh, this will be fine. This, like if we just had this, then that. That's good enough. And so I think that that's. I thought that was a great metaphor. I don't think Dutch is alone in this. I was actually talking with Dr. Kate Boatwright earlier, and we were sort of going back and forth and talking a bit about sort of the standard of care as a term. And so we talk about what is the standard of care and are we using that term correctly and everything. And I told Kate, you know, when I put my tinfoil hat on Matt, I really believe that the whole idea of a standard of care is under attack.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

And it's being undermined because. So the standard of care for me is what is acceptable medicine and what is quackery and what is dangerous for the patients.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

And there's a lot of people who could make money with quackery and doing things that are dangerous for patients. And the vet saying that doesn't meet the standard of care that's annoying to them, or it prevents them from being able to run the business they want to run. And so I really feel like there is an assault on, on that whole idea of standard of care. And a veterinarians really having the ability to say, this is not acceptable. We need to be included. We need to be in control of some of these aspects of medicine. Do you buy that?

[D]

Yeah, wholly and completely. And I think your choice of word is telling. Assault. It definitely feels like an assault. It's certainly pressure. And what I'm seeing is that pressure is creating bad trade offs in our profession right now. It's like, so, you know, imagine you got an old house and the doors are sticking, they squeak, they're. They're annoying. And someone comes in and says, hey, I've got a solution. Let's just take all the doors off. And at first it feels great. Everything is easier, there's no friction. But, you know, then it gets cold, there's no privacy. You know, the raccoons are running in and out of your house, and eventually you realize those doors are doing more than you thought. And so that's where I think we have to be careful. Because the danger isn't change. It's mistaking dismantling for progress. And that's the shift that I actually see happening here. Because what's being proposed in the rhetoric here isn't just more access or more convenience. That's the rhetoric that's encapsulating everything. It's a shift in how care is structured. Right. Going back to your point, and I think at its core, Dutch, it's a model where the transaction starts to come before the medicine. And that sounds subtle, but it's not. It's a. It's a really key and telling point. And to be fair, this is where I think the conversation gets a little incomplete. Not entirely wrong, because the way it's often framed is like, veterinary medicine is this big profiteering machine. But the reality is most clinics are small businesses. They're run by veterinarians who are dealing with staffing issues, burnout, rising costs, the same pressures everyone else is facing. And so when you flatten that into. Which is what was some of the rhetoric in the podcast, when you flatten this into they're just trying to sell you more stuff, you lose a lot of important context there.

[B]

Yeah. So I have Some ideas, and I wanted to bounce them off of you. It's one of the main reasons I wanted to have you in today. So when I look at Dutch, I see Dutch increasing the cost of care for pet owners that need it the most in three ways. And so I just want to see if this kind of holds water with you. And so the. The first is. I mean, first of all, let me just say I've gone back and forth a lot about this, and there are some things about Dutch that actually quite like, you know, I'm not convinced that it's the end of the world if people who are really struggle financially if they can get some appoquil for their itchy dog. I don't know that that's terrible. I don't know that. You know, if someone is really hard up and they, you know, and their. Their dog is being eaten alive by. By fleas or parasites, I. I don't. I don't know that that's bad. And so I just want to go ahead and say here at the beginning, I'm not. Not an anti Dutch warrior, really. I'm truly not. But I've got this idea, Matt, that access to care happens in two levels. And I haven't heard anybody talk about this, but it's driving me nuts that I'm hearing more about it. The first is access to preventative care. So there's like, hey, we can get you flea medicine faster. We can get you Apoquel faster, you know, like whatever. You know, the sort of the baseline preventive cares. But then the other access to care is my pet has been injured, and they got, you know, my small dog got attacked by two large dogs, and now I have to. It has to be sewn back together, you know, and there's anesthesia involved, there's pain medicine involved, there's doctor time involved. Those are different things in my experience. Like, I had a friend whose dog kind of lost. Lost her mind and ate like a whole bag of rawhides and then a bunch of other stuff. And so she went to the emergency clinic, and it was a national chain emergency clinic. And I'm in South Carolina, and I'm in a city in South Carolina, but still in South Carolina.

[D]

Sure.

[B]

And the endoscopy was $6,000 to. To. For them to try to scope the dog. And then surgery. If they could not remove the thing that they saw in the stomach, if they couldn't get it with endoscopy, then it was surgery, and surgery was $9,000. And if they went for the endoscopy and couldn't get the thing out. Then the surgery stacks on for $15,000, and I'm like, holy crap, this was a healthy dog that did this thing. And when the owner wasn't looking, and now we're looking at 6, 9, $15,000. And to me, that's a huge deal. And I think that my first part of sort of the Dutch thing is, are we. Are we robbing Peter to pay Paul? Meaning when we look at how do vet practices keep surgeries affordable and available, the more of these profit centers that get removed from vet practices, the less subsidy things like surgery and advanced care get. It seems to me that, again, it's not Dutch's fault. They're trying to. They're trying to run their business, and it's not their. It's not their job to keep profit centers inside vet clinics. That doesn't. That doesn't make sense. But I do see this type of reshuffling and decoupling of the veterinarian ultimately leading to acute interventions being significantly more expensive because there is no subsidy for that work anymore the way there was in the past.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Do you buy any of that?

[D]

I buy it, Andy? I think so. Two things, I think. One more in your second point around the pharmacy economics is. There's absolutely an economics piece to this which often gets overlooked in the conversations, and that's the revenue center that a pharmacy is for a veterinary practice. And the way I like to think about is think. Think about a restaurant. The margins on. On drinks are what allows them to keep the kitchen staffed and the menu reasonably priced. Now, imagine someone going into the restaurant saying, we're going to make dining cheaper by taking all the drinks out of the restaurant and selling them somewhere else. At first that sounds like a win for the customer, but then eventually that restaurant can't operate the same way. Something gives, right? And that's the dynamic here, is you take away the pharmacy margin, you don't make care cheaper, you make it more fragile because the pharmacy revenue subsidizes a whole lot of things that are conducted within the practice. Think about all the unpaid telephone calls, text messages, conversations, right? The list can go. The list can go on. I think the other piece of this, and I'm with you, I'm not an enemy of what Dutch is doing. I think telemedicine. You and I have had conversations like this before. Telemedicine can be and should be a really great tool. I have more a problem with the. How it's being done in terms of the Advocacy efforts, which I increasingly see are trying to throw veterinary practices under the bus as price gouging entities. And Dutch is the savior that comes in here. And so what's really not talked about, and it's rather obvious though, is Dutch is also a for profit company. Oh, sure, it's, it's venture backed, it has investors, that has to grow. And the model relies on memberships and medications being sold through the platform. And so it's not like they've discovered a nonprofit solution to veterinary care. All they're doing is moving where the transaction happens.

[B]

Right.

[D]

And that's where I think the framing matters, because this isn't a good guys versus bad guys kind of argument, although I think I see often being pitched that way. It's different business models with different incentives. And so what I see and what I really do not like, which is really what prompted the article, especially after the podcast, was if you're trying to convince pet owners to shift to a new model, the easiest way to do that is to make the current system look broken.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So you Highlight extreme examples. 5000 dentals, runaway inflation, the so called vets just sell things. And by the way, all those statements were from the podcast. They are information at best and wrong at worst. And so the problem is those examples aren't true. They're certainly not representative, but they're also persuasive. And when that happens, you're not just informing pet owners potentially with misinformation, you're also shaping their trust. And so then this all connects back again to that Trojan horse idea because the story starts to look like everything out there is broken. And here's the simple solution. And that's where I think we have to slow down. If you have to make the entire system look like a scam to justify your solution, it's usually worth a second look.

[B]

Yeah. The Uncharted Veterinary Conference Medical Director Summit is coming up. It is happening on September 15, 2026. It is a virtual event. It is meant to minimize your time off the floor if you're a medical director and maximize your skill, growth and your ability to implement what you're learning into your practices. I love to be a supporter of medical directors. I've gotten to work with medical directors all over the world and I am thrilled to be hosting this year's Medical Director Summit. Registration is open right now, $199 to register and you can use the code medical to get 20% off on your registration. That is medical as your promo code. I would love to see you there. I Love this event that September 15th medical directors head over to unchartedvet.com to get signed up today. You see this strategy everywhere today, right? I mean, yes, the system is broken and we need a radical change. I mean, that's politics.

[D]

That's politics every election cycle, isn't it?

[B]

Every. Yeah, every election cycle. You know, it's, you know, let's identify the quote, unquote enemy and try to rally people around to throw rocks at it, you know, and in this case, it's. It's the restrictions, it's the standard of care that prevents Dutch and others from being able to just run the business that they kind of want to run. So, I mean, this seems like the standard playbook. One of the things I've kind of wrestled with a little bit is two things can be true at the same time. It can be true that that is the playbook of let's sort of make an enemy of the vets and throw rocks at them. And also that the idea for pet owners, that vet clayer is getting expensive. That's not fiction, you know, like that. That's not made up. I think. I think that there's a danger for veterinarians of saying, well, yeah, these people are just trying to. To, you know, they're essentially trying to Trojan horse that. They're trying to stir up anger so that they can get what they want. And so we don't have to address the concerns that pet owners have that care is. Is really expensive. And I think that they're in. Is. Is part of the problem. You know, are there other. Are there other approaches to increasing access to care or helping to keep care affordables? That. That you're. That you're positive on that.

[D]

Yeah, again, I agree with you. And it's not to say that veterinary medicine doesn't need reform. We absolutely need reform. But the advocacy efforts I'm seeing are. To your point, it's about removing safeguards. So, for example, bring it back to the vcpr, right? And the physical exam. And this is, you know, this is where the physical exam piece really matters. It's. It's pretty fundamental. But if pets could talk, this whole conversation would be different. Right? I mean, imagine you. You're a doctor, you walk into the room, and the dog can talk to you and say, hey, Doc, it's my spleen. It started around Tuesday. The pain's about a six out of a ten. Right. But that's. That's not how this works. As veterinarians and all veterinary professionals know, because they're trained Your patients, they hide things. They show up late in disease. And so the physical exam isn't just a step. It's where you catch what the patient can't tell you. And that's why I keep coming back to this. Patients don't speak, and that's why the physical exam matters. But advocacy efforts by Dutch Pet are trying to dismantle the physical exam requirement. And so, again, I bring it back to the point of friction versus risk. A lot of what's being framed as progress is really just removing friction. And friction feels bad. Nobody likes it. But friction and risk are not the same thing. We experience this every day when we get in our car. Seatbelts can be annoying. Speed limits can be annoying. You know what would make driving less annoying? No rules at all. And that would feel amazing and fun right up until it doesn't.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And so I think that's the key distinction, is removing friction is not the same thing as removing risk.

[B]

Yeah. I think, sort of going back, I said that, you know, I see Dutch driving up prices for pet owners that need care most in three ways. And I think the second one for me is I'm already hearing stories about people who, you know, there was pet owners, and they've got their dog, and their dog has started to cough, and they go, you know, to Dutch, and there's no physical exam. And so they get sent, you know, cough tabs and Zyrtec.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And the dog's in congestive heart failure. And so, you know, you go, well, that was a misdiagnosis. Same thing. I've already heard another story of a cat that was urinating outside the litter box. They put him on antibiotics, and the cat was a diabetic cat. And, you know, the next thing you know, you're at the emergency clinic with diabetic ketoacidosis, and, you know, and, like, talk about increasing the cost of care.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

Again, I want to be honest, those are not the majority of cases. The vast majority of cases. People can kind of, you know, look at the pet on video and kind of make a guess, but when you're wrong, the cost is. It is enormous. And so I think that that's a problem. I also have been playing around with the idea of, like, what is Dutch's liability here? And so the truth, unfortunately, maybe it's not unfortunate. There's no emotional damages for the loss of pets. Right. Pets are property. And so I don't think anyone's going to be able. I don't think even an aggrieved pet owner can go and expect to win a significant lawsuit. I just don't. I think that anything there would be capped. And then my understanding is a good percentage of the veterinarians are 1099 employ. So they're. They're contractors, you know, and so anyway, there. There's definitely kind of that, like, I see this and I see this problem, and I don't really see accountability here, except. Except for the individual vets who, you know, you can go after their license and, And. But, you know, they're. They're. Tonight, they're to 99 contractors. And so they're. They're going to probably be on their own.

[D]

Yeah. All of what you just said reminds me of the point around and the question of who bears the risk.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

This is the part that in some ways matters most, because this isn't really only a vet issue. You know, if someone makes a bad business decision, fine, they lose money. But if someone makes a bad medical decision, the patient doesn't get a redo, the pet owner doesn't get that moment. Back to some of those examples that you mentioned. So at the end of the day, this isn't just a risk to veterinarians. It's a risk to the pets and the people who love them and cherish them. And that has to be front and center.

[B]

Yeah, I agree with that. I think that we talk about fur kids and people say their pets are their kids. And I think we have to make sure to remind people your pets are not your kids. There is no communication. If the medicine that you're giving them is just not working, you're not going to know that other than behavioral changes that you see or things like that. And it takes time. If your child ate, you know, a jagged bone fragment, hopefully you could extract that information from them verbally. But your Labrador is not going to tell you that. And so I think that's a real challenge. And the last of the sort of. The three things that I see sort of driving up costs. Again, I don't know how much Dutch is really to blame for this necessarily, but we saw this in the past. As pet owners get more access to sort of unregulated medications and treatments, the amount of time it takes before pets present to veterinarians increases.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, just as a general rule, and I can't. I can't back this up with data yet. My expectation is for more treatments that are done like this. The cases that present to the vet clinic are going to be presenting later. You know, we're going to see Pets sicker, they're three days later, they tried over the counter solutions or they tried medications without a physical examination. And we're going to kind of get them later on, but that's kind of how I'm looking at it, you know, and sort of say, what is the actual impact on pets? What is the actual impact on access to care? Even though we're getting this idea like we're here to help affordability and go, I think you guys are probably here to help affordability of flea medicine. Yeah, I think you're here to ratchet up. I mean, I think you're gonna have significant negative impacts on affordability for services for truly sick pets.

[D]

Yeah, I think there's real danger in all of that. And undoubtedly the more expensive veterinary care gets everything, people will push that further out. Right. And to your point, seeing delays and when pet owners are taking their pets to see a vet, either on a routine wellness basis or when they observe an issue, waiting maybe too long, perhaps because of the fear of the cost. And so we absolutely need to make veterinary care more affordable, but we have to do it within the framework of the safeguards of veterinary care and making sure that we're not dismantling those safeguards because they're standing in the way of what maybe one entity or multiple entities are after, which can be profit driven, not health driven. And so that we have to be careful about that because there's a balance between agency to make decisions and responsibility for those decisions. And the one thing I think that gets lost in a lot of these conversations is that systems in a general sense don't usually break because something crashes through the walls. That does happen. Generally it breaks because there's a repeated pattern that doesn't get corrected over time. You know, and so these safeguards that were put up for reasons for having an established VCPR for requiring a physical examination exists for a reason. You know, again, to use another analogy, if we take all these away, it's like having a great home security system and then texting someone your alarm code because you think that they're trustworthy. Right. That that's the pattern again, bringing it back to Troy. Troy didn't fall because the walls were weak. It fell because they let the gates open. They let down their safeguards.

[B]

I, I really love that presentation. I thought it was outstanding. Matt, where can people keep up with your writing? Where can they keep up with what you're doing?

[D]

Yeah, so occasionally I get the great honor of contributing to a periodical like Today's Veterinary Business. But I'm active on LinkedIn. I post weekly and they can reach me by [e-mail] outstanding.

[B]

Well, thanks so much for being here guys. Thanks for tuning in everybody. Take care of yourselves, gang. We'll talk to you later on. And that's what I got for you. Thanks for being here. Thanks to Matt for making time to come and check in. Gang. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you got a lot out of it, as always. If you did, please feel free to share it with your friends. Write us an honest review wherever you get your podcast and like subscribe, do all that sort of fun stuff that help grow the pod. So anyway, guys, take care of yourselves. I'll talk to you later on. Bye. Are you an early career veterinarian, a new graduate, or a vet Student? This is Dr. Andy Rourke and guys, I wanted to put something together just for you. I've got a brand new totally free newsletter. It only comes out once a quarter. It's definitely not meant to fill up your inbox, but I wanted to go ahead and just consolidate all of the information that me and the Uncharted Veterinary Conference are doing for early career veterinarians into one place. I'm going to be writing especially for for this newsletter. We're going to have podcast episodes that are in here specifically for early career vets, new grads, vet students. We're going to have training resources, we're going to have certificate courses, we're going to have special discount codes that are just for you guys. And so if you're in this boat and you want some content that's going to help you have an easier career, enjoy your time in practice, be more effective and happier as a veterinarian. Guys, this is for you. It's totally free. I'm happy to give it to you. Head over to Drandywork.comcareevets that's Drandy Rourke.comcareevets or you can find the link in the show notes. I hope this is really valuable for you. I hope that you'll check it out.