The issue of misunderstood animal prescriptions is not particular to Oregon. Veterinarians from across the United States — and occasionally from Canada and the United Kingdom — have posted about the subject on message boards of the Veterinary Information Network (VIN), an online community for the profession.
Dr. Sheri Morris, president of the OVMA and owner of Willamette Valley Animal Hospital near Salem, Ore., said the problem is driven by broad market trends.
“I think it’s because of the aggressiveness of human pharmacies to go after veterinary business, that’s what’s brought it to a head,” Morris said. “It used to be that it happened so infrequently that no one did much about it.”
In Morris’s hospital earlier this year, one doctor had an experience in which a pharmacist changed the type of insulin prescribed for a diabetic cat. The veterinarian prescribed glargine; the pharmacy provided NPH. The pharmacist “convinced (the cat’s owner) to buy it because it was less expensive,” Morris said.
“But they are completely not interchangeable, so we sent her back to the pharmacy, telling her, ‘No, you need to get what’s in the prescription,’ ” Morris recounted.
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