If you can’t afford urgent care for your dog who has a broken leg or your cat who has swallowed a small toy, the veterinary hospital at CSU Spur offers donor-subsidized services.
The doors open at 7 a.m. But by 8 a.m., the hospital is full for the rest of the day.
“We have to tell people, ‘We can't help you, and we don't know anybody that can,’ and that is absolutely heartbreaking,” said Dr. Apryl Steele, a veterinarian and president and CEO of the Dumb Friends League, which runs the hospital.
That’s why the Dumb Friends League and a coalition of veterinarians and animal advocates are backing Initiative 145 that aims to expand access to affordable veterinary services. Nearly 200,000 signatures were delivered for validations to the Colorado Secretary of State this week.
The measure would create a new mid-level position — between a vet technician who has a two-year associate’s degree and a veterinarian who has eight or more years of education — called a veterinary professional associate, or VPA. Those would be people with Master’s degrees in veterinary care who could diagnose animals, perform routine surgeries, and order and perform tests and procedures under the supervision of a licensed veterinarian.
“We're trying to increase that ability to serve everybody that needs veterinary care,” Steele said.
Other veterinarians and vet professionals oppose the measure
The measure faces opposition from the Colorado Veterinary Medical Association, American Veterinary Medical Association, and the Colorado Association of Certified Veterinary Technicians.
They argue that Initiative 145 is dangerous for pets because they say the new position doesn’t provide adequate training to perform routine surgeries, diagnose or prescribe treatment. They allege the proposed two-year Master’s degree includes training that is mostly online with just one-semester of clinical training.
“That whole concept is just reckless to think that we train someone in half the amount of time as a veterinarian to basically do everything a veterinarian does,” said Dr. Jennifer Bolser, a veterinarian in Colorado with 20 years’ experience.
Bolser said the “supervision” of the VPA by a licensed veterinarian the ballot measure calls for is not what people are imagining. She said veterinarians wouldn’t necessarily be directly involved in a routine surgery yet would still be responsible. She said the measure will add more liability stress to veterinarians.
“Not having experience poses a lot of risks, right? Surgeries require a high degree of expertise for patient safety, And so I think that just this initiative, it's just misleading voters.”
She said pet care should be comprehensive and competent and done by skilled professionals.
Opponents say that the solution is to focus on leveraging and expanding the scope and roles of veterinary technicians and veterinary technician specialists
Beginning last year, veterinary technicians in Colorado became regulated and title protected. A new state law expands what they are allowed to do including dental extractions, suturing incisions and performing reproductive ultrasounds.
“We can grow their salaries and get the compensation of this profession to a point that this can be their lifelong profession… this will be realized much quicker than trying to create an entire new profession,” said Bolser.
The Colorado Association of Certified Veterinary Technicians said it doesn’t currently support the concept of a VPA. The organization supports advancing veterinary technician specialists — techs with more knowledge who have passed a certifying exam — as mid-level practitioners. It believes that will provide advancement in a career rather than a new position.
But the measure’s supporters, which includes some veterinarians and a coalition of animal welfare groups, say studies have documented severe and chronic shortages of vet techs who stay in the field on average about seven years. They leave because of low salary and lack of career growth. The VPA Master’s program could offer a career path to qualified veterinary technicians seeking additional training, with the first graduates being ready to go to work in 2027.
Initiative supporter Steele said the veterinary associations stance against other job categories prescribing, diagnosing or doing simple surgeries is clear.
“If there is no opportunity for anyone except someone with an eight-plus-year degree to do any of those things, we're not in any way increasing access to veterinary care.”
Colorado State University, which would be the first in the nation to create a Masters in veterinary clinical care program, has one of the top veterinary schools in the nation. It drew 3,500 applicants for 150 seats last year.
The university said for veterinarians who choose to work with a VPA, the position could free up veterinarians for complex cases or manage demand for routine care under the supervision of the veterinarian.
In a statement, CSU said it has a decades-long history of developing and teaching veterinary education programs and said the curriculum includes a focus on hands-on learning throughout multiple semesters and courses. It concludes with an internship of supervised experience delivering routine veterinary care in a practice under close supervision of a veterinarian.
Bolser, meanwhile, worries about inequities that may be created. Someone with a two-year Master VPA will be further up the hierarchy than a vet tech specialist with five years of experience.
“I'm concerned that this is going to stifle or minimize the technician profession and the vet tech specialists that we already have and especially when we have just done such important work recently to grow this part of the field.
But another aspect of the measure say supporters, is to increase affordability
Pet owners struggle to find available, affordable care, while vet practices struggle to stay solvent. There are two ways to stay solvent: increase prices or increase efficiencies. Right now, the cost of care has been rising about 10 percent a year for the past several years, according to Steele.
“The thought is that these mid-level practitioners, who would work under the supervision of veterinarians, will increase the ability for practices to see more clients….this is going to increase efficiency.”
She said several models show that VPAs will decrease the cost of veterinary care. In addition, Steele said VPAs could also help fill the need for workers in animal welfare organizations. Nationally there has been significant increases in funding to provide subsidized veterinary care for people who can’t afford it.
“We have the subsidized care opportunities that are going unfilled because we can't hire veterinarians to provide that care,” said Steele. She said VPAs could perform many of those tasks.
Bolser, who opposes the initiative, would like to see veterinarians freed up by instead delegating more tasks to vet technicians and working legislatively to give them more skills.
The Secretary of State's office will now go through the petitions to verify they contain enough valid signatures — a minimum of 124,238 — to qualify for the ballot.
Initiative 145 was not the only pet-care related measure attempting to get on Colorado's ballot this fall. Initiative 144, would allow telemedicine visits with a veterinarian for appointments without having to see the pet first. Signatures are due Aug. 8, but organizers said they have stopped collecting signatures.
