How do vets justify £50 on a bandage

[Woodward23]

Our dog cut her self today on a walk and we had to take her to vets, the bill came to £130! Consultation medicine i can understand but £50 of that bill was for it to be bandaged up just how do they justify that cost! I know no one can probably help but I just needed to vent to get it out of my system

They don't need to justify the cost other than to their shareholders. The more they can charge the more money they make.

In the past 10 years most vet practices have been bought by one of a small number of corporations which have only one concern - profits.

How much training do you think it needs to hold your Pet safely, clean the wound and then bandage it?
How much staff time did it take?
How much does it cost to own the premises, keep them clean, light and ventilated....

When the NHS goes phut you are in for a huge shock about how much healthcare costs....

Insurance companies have done this. Vets can charge whatever they like and insurance companies will pay. They can order a battery of unnecessary tests and insurance companies will pay. They can prescribe branded expensive drugs instead of identical but generic cheaper drugs and insurance companies will pay. Insurance companies can then justify £100+ a month premiums because vet costs can be so high so you 'definitely need it'.

Pretty sure insurance companies want to limit their claims costs, they don't just accept high prices without question 🙄

🙄

^This.

It’s not veterinary expertise it’s corporate greed.

They can't justify it, and they are crooks. It cost more per night for my cat to stay one night at the vets than it would have cost me to stay in a 5* hotel in Mayfair. I'm sure a bandage was about £30 quid too!

The cost is for treatment at the vet and their skill in checking the wound and cleaning it. Plus the overheads of the vet surgery. Rent, heat, light. Cleaning, nursing care, receptionist etc.

If it’s so easy treat your own pet next time.

A vet or vetenary nurse will be spending time away from their own family to care for your pet overnight. The out of hours is why vets are struggling to recruit new vets and why many new vets only want locum work. They aren't crooks - they are human beings with families who are doing our of hours work because they don't want your pet to go without.

Most vet nurses dont even make enough money to live on. I gave it up coz of the stress, the angry clients, the bad breeders but mostly the long, long hours and the terrible pay. It takes years to train and lots of tough exams and we would get more pay stacking shelves in a supermarket.

Most veterinary practices will take the piss.

They also prey on vulnerable people who dearly love their pets and don’t have the knowledge to know they’re being ripped off.

Having an accident prone horse has, ironically, saved me lots of money in vet bills over the years as I'm now a dab hand at bandaging. Gamgee and vet wrap are no more than £5 together and for bandaging something like a dog's leg a single roll will last several bandage changes, so I'm afraid I do think the price they charge is a total rip off.

My dog caught her leg on barbed wire last year and I cleaned her up and bandaged her up. Cost me less than £15 for supplies and it healed beautifully and quickly. Bandaging isn't totally simple to get right, so I wouldn't recommend everyone goes off and starts applying them willy nilly, but generally mine don't go to the vets for cuts/scrapes unless it obviously needs stitching/antibiotics. I do think the quality of veterinary care has gone down drastically whilst the prices have rocketed since so many have been taken over by large corporations. It's a shame that the staff working in the surgeries themselves don't seem to be seeing any benefit from the vastly inflated prices, by the sounds of it from some posters on here.

Depends on where you live maybe? When my cat tore her paw pad clean off, the consultation, wound care, antibiotics and pain relief came to £35 all in! On the flip side, one of my other cats needs a dental with a few extractions as she has manky old lady teeth and they’ve quoted £350, which I don’t think is unreasonable at all as she’ll need anaesthesia, surgery, post-op monitoring, pain relief and antibiotics also.

Ex VN here. I was on a pitiful 18.5k in 2019, after 10 + years in the industry, 3 years of intensive training, 15 hours of CPD per year (costly) thereafter. It wasn’t enough to live on and my mental health was shot to shit so I left. VN’s are quite rightly pushing for better wages now and some places are now paying baseline 30k+; that is going to be reflected in a clients bill. Rightly so, we’re in a cost of living crisis and every skilled professional deserves to be paid fairly. It’s no less skilled than human nursing, and veterinary medicine has one of the highest suicide rates amongst professions in the UK, with stress remaining a huge issue. I personally found being called selfish, greedy and money grabbing regularly quite upsetting and one of the reasons I left.

Add to that some astronomical running costs (I used to order meds/equipment, handle payroll and cash up at the end of the day so I know first hand that the profit margins aren’t as massive as you might think). I know of a few independent practices that went bust in the last few years, and many more that have sold up to larger corporate companies that have access to cheaper overheads.

I’ll also add that supportive bandaging/wound care is a real skill in itself. If it’s done wrong it can cause a whole host of (expensive) issues from oedema to pressure sores and wounds that take longer to heal. A decent bandage and knowledgeable wound care can actually save you money. Hand on heart, the vet nurse bandaging your pet will want this outcome, there’s no financial incentive for them, they are more invested in your pet’s welfare.

Vets are not a rip off, all healthcare is expensive. Human, animal, it’s all the same. Largely the same drugs, same skills. Just more species to deal with 😅

I do understand how upsetting a huge bill is, and the need to vent, but £50 for a bandage is actually not a terrible price in my experience. Hope your pet’s cut heals quick 🤞and all the best.

Yes, I looked into vet nursing part time once and found I would be better off staying on the dole (this is in Australia, so different circumstances, but the dole is starvation money here).

I've also read recently that vets here have a suicide rate four times the average ... :(

Well said, @Pipsqueakpopsqueak .

I’m always torn on vets- I think they’re amazing and at times bound by costs but then, like you, we’ve been charged huge amounts for basically just being there. Recently got a nice letter saying ‘your lovely dog’s check up is coming up.’ Underneath EXTORTIONATE prices for a platinum/ gold/ silver option of check up. This was after he’d been in for a check after being fixed. I made a joke about how we’d just been in the other day and if I’d known I’d have done it all together and he looked so embarrassed I couldn’t help being a bit suss!

It’s when I have to take my elderly lady in for literally a 2 minute check so she can be given her hormone prescription to stop her peeing everywhere. Last ‘checkup’ didn’t last 2 mins ( and yup I did time it). The vet spent longer smiling at my dog who loves all people and remarked that so many animals are shy of her.. for obvious reasons! It is not on that they insist on charging full consult price for 2 mins of their time. At our vets if a normal consult is longer than 10 mins they charge double.

Vets are not a rip off, all healthcare is expensive.
Oh come on!!! Walked into the vet with dog weeks after he’d been neutered to check the stitches as he’d gotten slightly at some of them. Vet looked, said ‘no they’re going well and they’re dissolving stitches so you don’t have to come back’ patted him, said the dog was lovely- 70 euro. And as I said above no mention that in three days they’d send me a reminder to book him in for a full check up!!

You're not just paying for their time and the materials.

You're paying for the time they spent training, the receptionists wage, the nurses wage, the rent, the electric, heating, water, broadband etc.

This is nonsense. Vets have always required training etc, but the cost of of veterinary care has rocketed over the past few years - far above general inflation.

The money isn't being spent on vets, this is cooperate greed. A few large companies are buying out small practices and creating a monopoly in certain areas. It should be officially investigated imo.

And don't get ripped off paying vet prices for medication either. Ask for a prescription and you can usually buy at a fraction of the price elsewhere.

Try having an operation in a private hospital, the bill is itemised right down to the last paracetamol. Years ago, my mum had an op on BUPA, the bill came & it looked like a supermarket receipt listing everything down to the paper knickers she wore to go to theatre.

That's certainly true. Even with the horrendously expensive Cisapride that I have to get compounded for my cat, it's $180 through the vet and their chosen pharmacy, but I've been quoted $91 at a general compounding pharmacy. It's cheaper getting it shipped express interstate than getting it at home!

(Though I will say my vets are good with anything that can just be bought OTC - eye ointment that's made for humans but suitable for cats, or laxative powder, ditto, for instance - they just say "Get it at Priceline, you don't want to pay our prices!"