It was a busy first six months of 2023 for veterinary professionals and practices, and the rest of the year isn’t likely to slow down. With the tradeshow circuit back to pre-pandemic attendance and new regulations going into effect, veterinary professionals have had to manage far more than just patient care.
With the year a little more than halfway over, we’re taking a quick “paws” to review some of the major changes that have already gone into effect, ones still to come, and ways you can prepare your practice for success in the second half of the year. Here are the top five changes and trends we’re keeping an eye on.
1. Implementation of GFI #256
Earlier this year, the FDA finalized regulatory guidance for compounded medications, known as GFI #256. The new guidance affects both office stock in veterinary practices and individual animal-patient prescriptions. However, it does not include cGMP products from 503B outsourcing facilities, like Epicur Pharma.
Some of the biggest changes that GFI #256 brings include:
- Increased documentation for patient-specific prescriptions
- Limitations to available 503A office-stock drugs
Although veterinary professionals were aware of the impending changes with GFI for months, many have been left scrambling since it went into effect in April. If GFI is affecting your practice’s ability to get compounded medications for office use, partnering with a trusted 503B outsourcing facility can help you eliminate risks of limited ordering.
Because 503B outsourcing facilities aren’t included in the GFI changes, partners like Epicur Pharma can ensure your practice stays stocked with high quality, manufactured medications and help streamline ordering processes with our iFill ordering system. The system lists what you can order for office stock and will provide the documentation necessary for patient-specific orders if the guidance requires it.
Our team is dedicated to helping you stay up to date on regulation changes.
We partner with experts to offer educational webinars that ensure you understand the impact on your practice. Watch our most recent on-demand GFI webinar with Nicole Clausen, What Every Inventory Manager Needs to Know About Compounded Medications.
2. Impending USP Guidelines on Beyond-Use Dates
Coming in late 2023, new USP guidelines will limit Beyond-Use Dates (BUDs) on drugs from 503A compounding pharmacies. The changes will shorten the BUDs of compounded 503A products and will not allow pharmacies to establish longer dates, even with sufficient evidence to support or prove their cause.
The new guidelines will only affect BUDs and not expiration dates because drugs can only be assigned with an expiration date after the completion of extensive testing, which 503Bs are required to follow.
As with GFI, this USP guideline will not affect 503B products because they have longer/proven expiration dates validated by cGMP. This impending change is another reason why having a 503B partner is critical to your practice and patient care.
Want to learn more about Beyond-Use Dates vs Expiration Dates?
Read our blog!
Switching to a 503B partner now will not only alleviate any challenges you’ve had since GFI went into place, but it will also ensure you can order with ease as the impending USP guidelines of BUDs goes into effect!
3. Continued Burnout and Veterinary Staff Shortages
Unemployment rates continue to affect the veterinary industry, with estimates that by 2030 there will be a shortage of 15,000 veterinarians, making the demand for more workers increasingly urgent.
Veterinarians and staff alike struggle to cope with the challenges they face in their daily work environments. As a result, many dedicated professionals are turning away from veterinary medicine, exacerbating the current staff shortages. It is now more important than ever to be aware of the signs and symptoms of burnout so you can properly address them within your work environment.
Although it can be difficult to see, there are some ways you can help find solutions within your practice. It often starts with communication. Make sure you check in with colleagues, notice signs of stress, and offer help. Small changes within your work environment can help relieve the daily non-stop work, like setting a proper lunch break time. You can also automate processes where it makes sense and enhances your practice, such as online ordering and inventory management systems, to give time back to staff.
Need support? Many veterinary professionals are in crisis. Not One More Vet (NOMV) provides the necessary support to all members of veterinary teams and students who are struggling. Contact them today.
4. Prioritizing Client and Patient Relations
In the evolving veterinary industry, prioritizing client and patient relationships remains essential to ensuring the highest possible level of care, especially when transitioning to a service-based model. With this shift, clients often seek a personalized experience knowing you value their pet’s health and well-being as if it were your own.
Did you know?
All Epicur Pharma drugs are ready to ship same business day with 1-2 days in transit. Order today!
Often, veterinary hospital visits can be stressful for both the patient and the client. Creating an environment to keep everyone comfortable and educated throughout the visit can build trust with patients and clients.
Establishing trust with pet owners fosters a positive customer experience and nurtures long-lasting loyalty. This can be achieved by creating opportunities to share your knowledge with clients. Whether it’s tips on proper medication usage and storage, guidance on applying medications, reminders of seasonal factors such as ticks or high heat, sharing your expertise helps build a strong relationship with pet owners. To make the client’s time at your practice convenient, you can also stay regularly stocked on compounded medications approved for dispensing through a 503B outsourcing facility like Epicur Pharma.
5. Product Shortages
Product shortages are inevitable and variable, stemming from product recalls, labor shortages, unavailability of necessary packaging, or active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Recent compounded medication shortages from some suppliers have included Buprenorphine Injection, Tacrolimus AQ, and Gabapentin – leaving offices out of stock and unable to have the necessary medications readily available in case of patient emergencies. Keep in mind that for compounded medication, another supplier will be able to help you. The uncertainty of this makes it especially important to have a veterinary pharmacy that you can rely on to inform you of product changes and availability.
With Epicur, consistent and reliable 503B manufactured products are our standard every time. We offer one of the largest selections of 503B manufactured drugs that are traditionally compounded for animal health among currently registered facilities nationwide, with most of our products not having a backorder or shortage in years!
Partner with a pharmacy you trust—explore our available medications.
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Meet Mickey O’Connor, Epicur Pharma’s Director of Business Development
Mickey O’Connor has been part of the Stokes and Epicur story from the beginning. With his background as a pharmacist, Mickey brings a unique perspective and advantage to his role as Director of Business Development—both to customers and the company. Read our interview with Mickey to learn more about his role and his insights into all that’s happening at Epicur and in the veterinary field! Mickey, thanks for sharing more about your role on the team. Can you start by telling readers about how you got started with Stokes Healthcare and your current role? I’ve been with the company since the early 2000s. I worked with Emmett and Michael in retail pharmacy in the 90s before they purchased Stokes Pharmacy. My first job here with Stokes was as a sales rep selling human compounded medication. I worked as a pharmacist and as a sales rep for several years, and then, as we grew, I took on several different roles and grew into the role of business development. I’ve done everything from being a sales rep and a pharmacist to working in business development with individual veterinarians, practice managers, and purchasers for veterinary hospitals. Currently, I work with corporate groups to help them better manage their inventory and understand why it’s a benefit to utilize Epicur and Stokes Pharmacy. Can you tell us more about those specific benefits and the work you’re doing with corporate groups? A lot of times, the people who are involved from the corporate groups, whether it’s purchasing or management, are unfamiliar with the medication part. In years past, individual purchasers for the hospitals did a lot of the work as far as ordering medication. But, as the veterinary industry has grown, medication has become more important in the sense that there’s a lot more of it and a lot more options. The purchasing groups started to realize that they needed to look at how their individual locations were getting medication for their hospitals, and how to coordinate it so that there’s consistency throughout each hospital to ensure better medication management and purchasing. So, that’s a lot of the conversations I have with them. There’s still a lack of understanding of the difference between a 503A traditional compounding pharmacy versus a 503B outsourcing facility. When I bring up that topic, most of the time they either know very little about those two or nothing at all about 503B. When I explain it, they start to get a better understanding of the differences and can see how Epicur products can help their overall process of managing medication for the hospitals. A Partner for Better Quality At Stokes Healthcare, our mission is to advance the quality of care in veterinary medicine. We support all clinics, whether independent or part of a corporation, with the highest quality medications that your patients deserve. No matter your practice type, we will make sure your practice needs are our priority! The differences in 503A and 503B can be confusing and there’s still a learning curve to it. Why do you think that is? I think it’s because there’s been a lot of change in the veterinary space over the last 20 years, but more recently, over the last five years. Some veterinarians still want to do things the old way, it’s comfortable and what they are used to. Previously we heard vets and their staff say they used to be able to get whatever they wanted when they wanted it, and there was no problem. There was longer dating on compounded products, and individual pharmacists could kind of do things without certain checks and balances, meaning they were able to put a beyond-use date of six months when the product really wasn’t good for six months. So, really, the industry needed some more regulation. Even though that’s frustrating, we did need that and it’s taking time to educate everyone in the field. Jumping back to your previous experience, it is interesting that you started as a pharmacist. What kind of advantage does your background as a pharmacist give you in Business Development? When we talk about medication, it does give me some more credibility as a pharmacist when I explain why our products are more advantageous. For example, the buprenorphine 0.5 mg/ml injection specifically. I talk about the concentration being different, but it’s an easy calculation for a veterinarian or vet tech to make. And if you’re able to get everyone on board using the buprenorphine injection that Epicur makes, then you have more consistency across all of your facilities. You can put out memos on how to use it, train, and teach. Using that medication is going to help your clinic or corporation as a whole. Plus, there’s the fact that the buprenorphine that Epicur makes has never been out of stock. So, when I share this message, coming from a pharmacist, it does carry more weight. They know I understand the medication, how it works, different concentrations, and they feel like, ‘okay, this is a professional who knows both the business side and the medicine side.’ What was it like switching from human to veterinary medications? It was challenging. Going into compounding was challenging because compounding is different than traditional retail. But the veterinary side was even more challenging because you’re dealing with different strengths and concentrations. A medication that may be good for a human may not be good for a cat or a dog. The hardest part about the compounding side was working as a sales rep. Back when I started with Stokes, around 2002, when you talked to a human medicine doctor about compounding, they didn’t really know what compounding was. So, before I could sell them on who we were and why they should use us, I had to explain to them what compounding was and why compounding, in general, could benefit them and their practice. Mickey and his dog, Cooper! Keep reading to learn more about Cooper. Sounds like the educational curve you mentioned for
