New Study Reveals Generally Reasonable Access to Preventive Veterinary Appointments for Dogs

December 15, 2025

A new multi-state study conducted in early 2025 reveals the majority of dog owners can get timely preventive veterinary appointments, access to care decreased in rural communities — the RESEARCH appears in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

The research team was able to secure an appointment 67% of the time with an average wait time of 6.4 days (median: 3 days) — there was a relatively large percentage of cases where callers were unable to reach the veterinary staff. When they didn’t secure an appointment, it was typically because they couldn’t connect with staff (15.1%) or were on hold for excessively long periods – more than five minutes was the cutoff in the study (8.2%), or staff refusal to provide any information (1.9%). Inaccuracies (such as inaccurate phone numbers or specialty care focus of the clinic) occurred in only 2.2% of cases. In 3.9% of cases, veterinarians didn’t have the capacity to accept new patients.

When calling rural veterinary practices, the research team was able to make an appointment less than 62% of the time and the average wait time increased to 8.6 days.

According to Simon Haeder, the study’s lead author and an associate professor in Ohio State’s College of Public Health:

  • “Access to veterinary care appears to be generally pretty good and the wait times aren’t too long, particularly if you compare it to how long people often have to wait to establish primary care, but there’s clearly room for improvement in less populated areas,” — current efforts to increase the number of veterinary students nationwide, and at Ohio State, could help remedy this disparity, Haeder said, according to Ohio State News.

RELATED:

  • Iowa State University Report on the Shortage of Veterinarians in Rural Iowa
    https://vetmed.iastate.edu/story/rural-vet-shortage/

    • “Our idea was to gather information that we could use to help understand why a shortage of veterinarians in rural Iowa is developing, and then use that information to start attacking the problem.”
      • Survey of current Iowa State veterinary students, found that geographical location and cost of living were not high on students’ priority lists. Instead, mentorship, salary and type of practice were the top priorities — “many students’ perceptions are that they will make significantly less in rural practices.”
      • The potential lack of mentorship opportunities, outdated or non-existent equipment, job opportunities for a significant other or spouse were all concerns mentioned by current veterinary students.
      • Long hours was also an issue that was discovered in the study — “some clinics claim students don’t want to be on-call or work on weekends.”