Who watches the Watchdogs?

The Watchdog “expose” on buying veterinary drugs online had a lot of the veterinary community quite confused – many stories are dramatised for television, but framing the piece as an undercover report didn’t really sit right with a lot of us, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the way the report was filmed insinuated vets were trying to conceal the option of buying medicines online as a way of trying to increase their profits, despite that online veterinary pharmacies have been around for a long time and it’s no secret owners can choose to purchase medicines online instead of from their own practice.

Legally, veterinary practices should be displaying signs indicating that owners can request to buy their pet’s medicines elsewhere, and vets will often openly discuss the option of buying from online pharmacies for patients on long-term medications, but it is not always as clear cut as you think.

Continued veterinary involvement

The programme did not make it clear that many drugs are POM-V, which, for animals, means they can only be prescribed by a qualified vet and, therefore, an owner cannot order medicines as they please without contacting or seeing a veterinary professional first.

If owners decide to buy online, the animal still has to be directly “under the vet’s care” to be prescribed something and, therefore, will still need regular check ups, the frequency of which will depend on the condition and medication prescribed.

Some medications have potential adverse side effects, which must be monitored through regular examinations and, in some cases, blood tests to ensure the the drug is being used safely and effectively. The vet will also charge for his/her time for providing a written prescription to be used elsewhere. The ultimate cost of long-term medications is, therefore, not quite as straightforward as “a vet practice charges x and the online pharmacy charge y” as the programme suggested.

Six of one…

A client once came to me with a list of medications their dog was on, detailing the costs of each (after prescription fees and postage), with the conclusion it was cheaper to buy some of the medications directly from the practice, but others online. This shows it can require a fair amount of research to work out if there is any benefit in buying online, but owners must undertake that themselves to discover what will work best for them and their pet.

While purchasing medications online for long-term conditions is perfectly acceptable, it’s not appropriate in emergency scenarios or when medication needs to be instigated immediately. The delay in the online pharmacies receiving the prescription, dispensing and posting when considering your vet being able to hand the medication out on the day is simply not comparable for these situations.

Legitimate reasons

There are a number of reasons veterinary practices charge more for the same medications than online pharmacies:

• Drugs at veterinary practices are sold at, at least, some amount of profit for the same reasons we charge for our services – substantial costs are associated with keeping a veterinary practice up and running, including maintenance of specialised equipment, electricity, water, heating, business premises costs, and – at the bottom of that list – the wages of all of the staff at the practice, including the vets.
• Rightly or wrongly, there is no NHS for pets, so, at the end of the day, practices are businesses and have to make a profit to keep their doors open. The costs involved in running a veterinary practice are far more than the costs of the online pharmacies, which will, in turn, be able to charge much less for products.
• The matter of veterinary practices buying drugs is complicated in itself – the companies who manufacture the drugs will offer better deals to larger companies, while some offer rebates on unsold vaccines.
• Online pharmacies are not bound by the same strict guidelines as veterinary practices regarding where they have to source drugs from; therefore, the prices online pharmacies sell drugs for is often less than a veterinary practice can purchase it from their wholesaler. To price-match the online product, the practice would be running at a loss.

As many of these programmes tend to be, the Watchdog piece was very one-sided and did not detail the reasons for the dramatic price differences in the examples given. In many cases your vet would rather you save money by buying drugs elsewhere rather than not bring your animal to the vet at all for fear of huge drug bills.