As Brits, we love to complain – about the weather, the traffic, and our healthcare system. If you were to pick a random person on the street, you could pretty much guarantee they would be able to find something to moan about on the subject of the NHS. And for those members of the public who also have pets, there is often a natural comparison drawn between veterinary and human healthcare. As a vet, I often hear clients jokingly comment that their pets receive a better level of care than they themselves do. But is there any truth in this? And is it even a fair comparison in the first place?  

The NHS 

The NHS, the National Health Service, officially began in the UK in July 1948, with the aim of providing free healthcare at the point of use – basically, any legitimate UK resident could access medical care without any charge. Prior to this, healthcare could have come from charities, private medical care or local municipal schemes, with a person’s wealth often directly correlated to the level of care they received. Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Minister for Health in 1948, wanted to create a national system to eliminate this hierarchy. The funding for the NHS comes from the taxpayers and National Insurance contributions, though some services such as dentistry and prescriptions are only partially subsidised.  

Although private healthcare is alive and well in the UK, currently only around 8% of the population have access. Therefore, for most people, their care from the GP level all the way through to major lifesaving surgery could potentially not cost them a penny.  

The Veterinary Business Model 

Animal healthcare in the UK is very different. There is no NHS for pets. The UK Veterinary sector is much more likened to private healthcare. Although there are schemes available to help those on lower incomes and charity veterinary centres that will either offer free or subsidised healthcare, for most pet owners, any type of veterinary care will come with a bill. Veterinary care is also not centralised, though the days of hundreds of independent veterinary practices have gone and they are slowly being replaced by large corporate groups. The recent CMA report has highlighted areas of the sector that are to undergo various changes in order to try to make the financial aspect of veterinary care more transparent. Many people hope this will bring down costs, but those in the field warn it could actually have the opposite effect.  

But money isn’t everything. There are many other components of the healthcare systems that influence people’s opinion on the level of care they receive.  

Waiting times 

Often the biggest moan about the NHS is waiting times – to get a GP appointment, to receive test results, to get a surgery date. This is often where veterinary medicine trumps human medicine. It is very rare that an animal patient cannot be seen on the same day if they need to, often straight away if it’s an emergency. Blood results, even for routine cases, can take as little as 20 minutes and rarely more than 24 hours. Surgeries can be booked in within a matter of days, even for complex procedures like orthopaedics, where their human counterparts could be waiting weeks or months. Yes, a lot of this is about capacity and physical availability, but when you’re worrying about your pet’s health, speed can be incredibly reassuring.  

All under one roof 

For the majority of veterinary patients, they can be seen by a vet, tests carried out, imaging done and surgery performed, all at the same place. At worst, they may need to go to one other referral centre for more complex procedures or work-ups. In human healthcare, you could be seen at the GP surgery, sent to the pharmacy for the medication, to the community hospital for x-rays, an out-patient clinic for blood tests, a larger hospital for the surgery, a physiotherapist for post-op care and to the hospital doctor for follow up consultations. This is because vets are multi-disciplinarians – they are GPs, pharmacists, radiographers, dentists, surgeons, anaesthetists and much more. This obviously isn’t possible to achieve in human medicine but is a huge benefit for pet owners.  

Advanced therapies 

This is a bit more complex and a bit less one-sided. Advances in human medicine are generally far, far ahead of veterinary medicine – robotic surgeries, complex joint replacements, innovative neurosurgery. Veterinary medicine typically lags behind human medicine and, due to ethical considerations, sometimes the more advanced procedures are simply not an option. Therefore, human patients have many more options available to them in order to increase or maintain a good quality or quantity of life.  

However, the speed at which any new advances are introduced does vary between veterinary and human medicine. When a new drug or therapy is suggested for the veterinary market, the process is a lot quicker to get it in use, due to different regulations and fewer requirements. The average time from a drug being discovered to being used in a veterinary commercial setting is 5 to 9 years, but for human products, it is 9 to 15 years.  

Contact time 

The GP is often seen as a fleeting creature – available for a 10-minute appointment (one appointment, one problem) and typically impossible to get hold of at any other time. This may be a little harsh and I know there are very approachable and available GPs out there, however they are incredibly busy and see many more patients a day than the typical vet. But this can mean, that in the eyes of clients, their veterinary care can be more ‘caring’ than their own human experience. As a vet, I regularly get messages left for me by clients which I respond to personally, I will call for updates, email with detailed advice and our typical appointment time is 15 minutes, though much longer for our home visits. Within our veterinary practice, we also try wherever possible to keep continuity and owners will often request, usually successfully, to see the same vet each time. This leads to the development of great relationships between vet and client and builds that level of trust. Simply due to logistics and demand, this is rarely possible within GP surgeries, though I’m sure they wish they could.  

Why the differences? 

Probably, the two main driving factors behind the differences between human and veterinary healthcare are money and bureaucracy. In general, although the NHS and its patients can benefit from government funded care, they also have a lot of ‘red-tape’ and regulatory procedures to wade through in order to access this care. In the private veterinary sector, care is a lot more accessible and immediate but at a cost to the owner. However, this means the care is often owner-driven – the main limiting factor being the owner’s money.  

Probably one of the biggest differences in the two sectors, and the one that is the foundation of a lot of the pressures on the NHS, is the care of the elderly population. In the UK, our population is ageing and modern healthcare is advancing. To put it bluntly, those that may have died in their 60s or 70s a hundred years ago, are now happily living into their 80s, 90s or even longer. But this is due to advanced medical care which costs money, uses resources and puts pressure on a system that is still caring for the rest of the population. Rightly or wrongly, this pressure just simply doesn’t exist in the veterinary sector. Yes, our care of elderly patients has also improved over the years but the ethics of what can and should be done with elderly pets weighs heavily on owners’ minds, with many choosing not to constantly pursue diagnostics and subject their pet to major surgery in their later years.  

In veterinary medicine, we have the option of euthanasia, meaning that instead of keeping pets going with medications and therapies that may not be in their best interests, we can let them go with dignity when their quality of life declines.  

Fair comparison? 

Is comparing the level of care between the human and veterinary sectors even fair? Although they obviously both deal with the prevention and treatment of disease, albeit in different species, this is pretty much where the similarities end. They are two very different business models, that operate in two very different ways. It would be like comparing the performance of a Lamborghini against a Mini. Unless the human population switches to utilising private healthcare, it’s just not a fair fight, but we need to be grateful for what we have. No, it’s not perfect, yes sometimes veterinary care seems ‘better’ but it’s our NHS and we should be proud of it.  

Further reading 

How pet healthcare came to rival – and beat – the NHS – The Telegraph  

The vet will see you now… – BBC  

Pet owners to benefit from biggest vet sector reforms in 60 years