About 3 years ago we started providing a limited service to families with no ability to pay for emergency vet care called HOME (Help & Options for Medical Emergencies). For pets needing emergency or urgent care, we provide the services through our in-house veterinary clinic (4 vets on our team) and reunite the pet with their family. Cases like foreign bodies, soft tissue injuries, pyometra, dystocia, urinary obstruction, would qualify (orthopedics, cancer, other long-term illnesses would not).
It was going well until the past year. Our community, like many others, is experiencing a consolidation of veterinary practices and vets leaving the profession or area, and the only emergency vet hospital in the area lost so many of its emergency vets that their emergency hours and ability to take on cases is severely limited. We refer people to ScratchPay or Care Credit to try to fund services at a full practice vet first, but even if they do qualify, it is difficult to even have the pet seen.
So many of the vet practices refer families and their pets to our organization that we can't keep up. We are seeing emergency cases 7 days a week now, some requiring our team to stay after hours, some requiring weeks or more of care...and it is draining on our team.
Is anyone else with an in-house clinic providing emergency/urgent care like this? If you do, how is your program structured and what does your staffing look like? If you don't provide services, what are the options for the pet owner?
We are facing the possibility of drastically increase our staff and funding to support this ongoing need in the community, or have to say no to people with pets in crisis or only suggest euthanasia.
I'm grateful for any thoughts or advice!!
#AccesstoCare
#Medicine,SurgeryandSterilization
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Adrienne McHargue, she/her
VP & COO
Lollypop Farm, Humane Society of Greater Rochester
Fairport, NY
www.lollypop.org
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