Don’t be surprised if you’re stuck behind a chocolate lab, a Scottish fold and a guinea pig when you’re picking up cold medication at the pharmacy in the years ahead.
A push from the Competition Bureau would see the distribution of pet medications expanded beyond veterinarian offices in a move the competition watchdog claims could help to tame the surging costs of pet ownership.
“The issue is very relevant to Canadians because it impacts both their wallets as well as the well-being of their pets,” says Youssef Zine, one of the lead researchers behind the Competition Bureau’s efforts to widen distribution for pet meds.
The costs of owning a pet have ballooned in recent years, Zine and his colleagues pointed out in a report published this week. Statistics Canada data shows Canadian households collectively spent some $7.4 billion on pet foods and medications in 2022, up from $5.7 billion in 2019.
The costs of owning a single dog or cat can rise to thousands of dollars per year for the average household.
The Competition Bureau said inflation and shortages of veterinarians are contributing to the rising prices for pet owners, but so too is a lack of competitive forces in the industry.
Zine argues that pet parents could save money by disrupting the current model that sees the majority of pet medications flow directly from the manufacturer to the distributor to the prescribing veterinarian.
“In our belief, this lack of market competition leads to higher prices and limited options, making it difficult for pet owners to find affordable and convenient options for their pet prescription,” he tells Global News.
The proposed solution? Make it easier for a pet parent to bring certain prescriptions from the vet to get filled at a community pharmacy.
It’s a model that’s playing out already in Quebec after the provincial pharmacists association successfully lobbied for access to a national distributor of pet meds. Pet prescriptions can also be filled on a limited basis in some specialized Ontario pharmacies.
Justin Bates, the CEO of the Ontario Pharmacists Association, says it’s a model that makes sense to him. The freedom to choose where you take a prescription to be filled for human medications is a “central tenet” of the Canadian health-care system, he tells Global News.
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“I think the same principle applies to consumers when it comes to giving their pets a medication and understanding that they do have choice,” he says.
Dr. Tim Arthur, the president of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and a vet himself in Ottawa, tells Global News that expanding pet medications to community pharmacies would be a “new concept for your average veterinarian,” but he does see some possible upsides, depending on how the model is integrated.
For one, separating out the vet and pharmacy visit can be a game-changer for Canadians living in remote or rural communities who might have to drive multiple hours to get an appointment with their veterinarian, if they have one at all.
Arthur says that, in circumstances where he can diagnose a pet’s issues over telemedicine, he could get the owner to fill the prescription at a local pharmacy rather than him having to ship the medicine, adding costs and delays into the process.
“Access to care, if veterinary medications became available through human pharmacies, I think would improve,” Arthur says.
But he also has concerns about the quality of care for Canadians’ furred friends if filling the prescription is taken out of vets’ hands on a routine basis.
Pharmacists don’t have the same understanding of animal physiology as they do for their human patients, he notes, which can affect the checks and balances that should be built into a system.
If a doctor prescribes a dosage of a medication but overlooks how it interacts with another medication or overprescribes an amount, a pharmacist can catch that.
Similarly, Arthur says if he prescribes acetaminophen for a cat, his technologist at his office will likely ask if he meant to write aspirin instead, as the former is toxic for kitties.
“And I will say, ‘Thank God you caught that,’” Arthur says. “If I send that same script to a pharmacist, they’re not going to have the faintest idea. And it worries me.”
Bates acknowledges that there needs to be an educational element to expanding the distribution of pet medications to pharmacy channels. Those resources and extra training are available, and he expects that such a shift will happen over the course of a few years, giving pharmacists time to prepare for a wider rollout.
Changes to pharmaceutical distribution like this would need to be legislated at the provincial and territorial levels.
Despite recent pushes to expand the role of pharmacists in Ontario — giving them the power to write prescriptions for a growing number of minor and common ailments, for example — Bates says the OPA would be in favour of the changes and doesn’t believe it would add a significant burden to the system.
“We’re well prepared to be able to take on additional tasks,” he says. “It’s just a matter of managing the demand.”
Expanding pet medication distribution to pharmacies likely won’t make life any easier for veterinarians, who are already facing financial strain, Arthur argues.
Software used in vet offices to write and fill prescriptions is streamlined for the singular distribution channel. For filling prescriptions elsewhere, Arthur says vets would likely need to print, fax and then scan the files again to keep their records up to date.
As for price, Arthur says he does see some possibility of cost savings on the medications themselves.
If the model is implemented similarly to how human medications work in Ontario pharmacies, whereby pharmacists are limited in how much they can mark up any one product, Arthur says there could be savings for the end consumer.
He adds there’s a convenience cost, however, in having to make multiple trips between the vet and the pharmacy.
Pharmaceuticals are indeed a “profit centre” for veterinarians, Arthur says, but it’s not a significant one — close to 10 per cent of a vet’s income. But risks to that revenue come when vets are struggling with workforce shortages and paying significant costs to attract and retain staff, in addition to inflationary forces elsewhere in the industry.
“We’re already under a fair amount of economic strain. And the last thing we really need is to lose 10 per cent of our potential profits and still have to balance the books somehow,” Arthur says.
If that revenue stream were diminished or taken away completely, he says vets might be forced to raise their costs on other services to make up the difference. Then, he argues, pet parents will be stuck with both a rising vet bill and having to pay for the medication at their local pharmacy.
“That money is going to have to be made up somewhere,” Arthur says. “So there’s an outside chance that your costs may actually go up.”
And while the access to care might improve under this model for those living in remote communities, Arthur argues there are some cases where the opposite might be true.
For those living in small towns who skip the vet and get a prescription filled at the pharmacy, that veterinarian might decide running a business in a smaller community isn’t worth the trouble when they could be making more money in the city.
“And that would not be good for anybody,” Arthur says.
Zine says the goal of the Competition Bureau’s report is not to “replace veterinarians,” but to give consumers more choice in the system as it stands, hopefully leading to a better outcome for pet parents and their furry family members.
“We understand how important veterinarians are to the health of pets,” he says. “We believe that, through competition, consumers benefit not only due to convenience but also for pricing.”