Pros and Cons for Veterinary Orthopedic Surgery

A DVM's guide to introducing orthopedic capacity

Are you looking at adding orthopedic surgery to your vet clinic? Orthopedic surgery is acommon thing that many vet clinics offer. While this can be something that you can easily add to your practices, there are many pros and some cons that you need to consider when thinking about adding orthopedic surgery to your veterinary clinic.

What are the Benefits of Having Orthopedic Surgery in your Clinic?

These are some of the wonderful benefits of having orthopedic surgery in your vet clinic.

1. Ability to provide more for your patients: Many vets love being able to do anything possible for their patients. When a pet has a fractured leg or ruptured cruciate ligament, many vets end up having to refer these to a specialty clinic. Learning to do orthopedic surgery and offering this service at your clinic allows you to provide everything possible for your patients at your clinic.

2. Increases your surgical abilities: Learning to do a new surgery can increase your surgical abilities. For a vet who enjoys surgery, this can give you something fun to learn to do. This is a great thing to have on your resume if you ever move to a new clinic.

3. Increase Revenue for your Clinic: Referring orthopedic surgeries to other clinics decreases the revenue for your clinic. Being able to perform these higher-cost surgical procedures not only increase your practice profitability but can also save your client money by not having to have them done at a specialty clinic.

4. Stand out Among Other clinics: Being able to offer a special service like orthopedic surgery will help your clinic gain new clients and make you stand out among the different clinics. Some pet parents love that they can get anything and everything done at the same clinic without having to travel to a specialist.

5. Can offer service to clients that cannot afford specialist: Surgeries at a general practice veterinary clinic tend to cost less than those at a specialty hospital. Learning to perform orthopedic surgery at your veterinary clinic can help a client who wants to have the surgery done; they just cannot travel to the specialist or afford the higher cost.

What are the Challenges of Adding Orthopedic Surgery to your Clinic?

These are some of the challenges that veterinarians face when adding the abilities to do orthopedic surgery to their clinic.

1. Cost of orthopedic equipment: Orthopedic equipment, in particular orthopedic drills and saws, can be costly. Adding this service to your clinic, you would need to be able to purchase a lot of new equipment and supplies. Depending on what surgery you are considering doing, you will different size pins, plates, and screws. The startup cost can prohibit some vets from adding this to their practicedue to the slow return on their investment.

2. Learning new skills: While learning a new skill and how to do a new surgery can be fun and rewarding, it takes time to learn these new skills to be able to

successfully perform an orthopedic procedure. There are many continuing education classes on different orthopedic surgeries. These can be expensive classes and usually take many days to learn the new skill. After learning how to do the procedure, you will then need to be able to perfect the surgery. All of this can take time.

Orthopedic surgery is a great service to offer your client. While the startup may be a little expensive and time-consuming at first, learning a new skill and being able to offer these services to your clients, you will quickly start to see the rewards. When looking into introducing orthopedic surgery into your vet clinic, consider these pros and cons.