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

I think veterinary medicine has lost its way a bit. I think due to insurance they're now offering all sorts of treatments that no one would normally have. I recently took my cat in who was 14/15 years old. First consultation with the symptoms he was suffering I was recommended to have tests of £1000. This would be to identify why he was struggling to eat and breathe. When asked the potential causes they were all fatal. So I could spend money finding out exactly why my cat was dying? I couldn't get my head round this. The tests would have involved a couple of overnights all the while my cat was struggling to breathe or eat. I declined the tests and following a different vets diagnosis decided to have him PTS that week.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Veterinary medicine too often forgets animals live in the moment. Their quality of life is determined moment by moment. Not by some future time when they're cured.

Clearly you have never worked in insurance. Insurance companies will not pay what they deem to be an over-inflated price be it cars, builders or vets.

Spot on Duckypuss - it’s not the insurers pushing up the costs - they will be battling to keep them down.

^This. Not helped by programmes on the TV where animals with serious often rare conditions are “treated” although their long term prognosis/outcome is rarely if ever mentioned.

It can't be justified no matter what anyone says.
We recently had a new vet practice open (which I'm lucky to now be registered with) who are considerably cheaper than any other vet practices around here.
When they opened they said they wanted to do things differently and show there was no need for such high costs and that is exactly what they have done.

Just to add to my above message.

It's still not cheap but it's a lot more affordable than the rest of the vets around here (which are now mostly not independent).

Bandaging is a skill, too tight and you cause major issues, too loose and it's off...

As for drugs, vets are bound by the cascade so if there is a licensed product for that condition for that species they have to use it rather than the same drug licensed for a different species (next) or humans (last). So if a drug company brings out a "special" version of pergolide for horses which is now licensed for horses, vets have to use that new and patented drug rather than generic human pergolide... So that would be greedy drugs companies not greedy vets... Also vets can only buy from licensed wholesalers whose prices are more expensive than the prices on the online pharmacies that clients can access with prescriptions.

The profession is in crisis, big corporates who only care about profits are buying up practices, the outgoing owners either retire or stay on for a couple of years. Junior vets are disillusioned by targets based on upselling while struggling with cost of living and leave the profession... but the corporates are happy because new grads are cheaper and don't know how things used to be plus can't argue effectively for clinical judgement to override plain old price on supplies.

Vets training is longer than training to be a Dr
Most vet practices are now owned by large companies not individuals like in All Creatures Big & Small, so demand a higher profit
Animal medicine is not heavily subsidised like the NHS
You are not just paying for the bandage or time, it's for the receptionist, the VN etc to be available at all times

It's insurance creep.

Someone posted a US healthcare bill either on here or FB a few years ago and a cotton wool ball was itemised at something ridiculous like £1, when you could get a bag of 50 of them retail for the same price.

If the insurance companies will pay that, that will be the price.

Here we go, more vet bashing 🙄

It won’t just be £50 for the bandage it’ll also include the time to bandage the dog up safely. Tbh £130 sounds about right, each time I see my private consultant doctor he charges £170 for 30 minutes and that’s with no treatment!

Vet practices aren't running at massive profits, but they are runnig at very high overhead. Blame pet insurance, Supervet, and people calling dogs/cats "furbabies". 20-30 years ago if you took your pet to the vet an x-ray was a rare thing only used when a diagnosis couldn't be made my look-feel. Small animal specialists were rare outside of cities, most practices had a mixed practice. There was a degree of realism around affordability to the owner and quality of life for the animal.

My local vet now has x-ray, an ultrasound in every consuting room, MRI, and probably a Star Trek tricorder. I've been offered diagnistics at over £2k that had very little to do with either affordability or my pet's quality of life. Many default treatment options are now only affordable with insurance and it's only if you ask about alternatives that something more afforable is discussed - "Let's wait and see" isn't said nearly enough.

Call me hard-hearted, but whenever this comes up you inevitably get:

• "You shouldn't have a pet if you cant afford it"
• "I would sleep on the streets to pay for my pet's care"
• "There's nothing I wouldn't do for my furbaby"

But my attitude is that an awful lot of these expensive treatments, the Fitzpatrick solutions, put far too little consideration on the quality of life of the pet. They're for the benefit of the owner, not the animal.

The issue that must be addressed in the vetinary industry is how basic welfare/quality of life treatments can be kept afforable without using them to subsidise all the expensive equipment and treatments the Furbaby Insurance arms race is pushing. Annual healthchecks. vaccinations and pet dentail treatments must be kept affordable for as many pet owners as possible. The cost of pet dental treatments is becoming scandalous.

20-30 years ago if you took your pet to the vet an x-ray was a rare thing only used when a diagnosis couldn't be made my look-feel.

Thanks to my vet being able to do heart scans and having a vet trained in cardiology my cat had a good quality extra 6 months after being diagnosed with heart failure than he wouldn't have had 20-30 years ago.

It wasn't cheap but to me he was worth it and I would have found the money even if the insurance hadn't paid out.

While I agree that some people take treatment too far do we really want to go back to the days of putting an animal to sleep for something that can be treated? I remember our cat being put to sleep when I lived at home because she was diabetic. Thankfully there would now be options for treatment.

Plus it will obviously include wages for all staff, insurance, electricity, heating, lighting, laundry, CPD, utilities, rent, water, repairs to equipment....

It's not really that, is it? Since investment companies like CVS bought up over 500 vet practices in the last decade or so, prices have rocketed because shareholders need their return. In my practice, an annual checkup and jabs for my cat doubled overnight. And stop being petulant. It's so unpleasant in an adult.

What was the treatment given to the cat that gave it another 6 months?

You're paying for the vet's expertise - the years they have spent in training, practice and continuous professional development. Plus the overheads of running the practice - the wages of auxiliary staff such as cleaners, receptionists and so on.

Ask yourself why you didn't simply buy a bandage and put it on your dog yourself - because you aren't qualified to assess the severity of the wound, whether stitches and antibiotics were needed etc. You're paying for someone who is qualified to assess it.

You sound like you don't believe me but he had a heart scan and when he was diagnosed he had frusemide, clopidigril and benefortin.

I've had pets a long time and feel that since covid the prices have sky rocketed. Whatever the issue is with my cat or dog now it will be at least £100 to see the vet and get basic meds.

Pre covid it was more like £55.

I'm not sure how they can justify the huge leap tbh, you're looking at £20 per minute of a vets time going on the last appointment my dog had.

I do believe you. My concern was that it would have been a very involved treatment that required surgery or chemo and the 6 months night have been at a high quality of life cost to the cat.

Almost five years ago we chose not to spend £2k+ on a specialist referral and diagnostics for our dog's seizures because realistically there were two outcomes. No cause identified, in which case control symtoms with medication, or a tumour and we knew we would not put an elderly dog through that level of surgery and/or chemo. We went straight to the option of controlling the symptoms through nedication, and she's still going strong.

I find constantly criticising highly trained professionals pretty unpleasant as well but there you go, each to their own.

Unfortunately these threads always do descend into vet bashing when as you say most of the problem is caused by investment companies buying up practices not the actual vets themselves. They just bear the brunt. My vets isn't cheap but is an independent local chain (they have 6 or 7 practices in the local area so I'm not sure how to describe it). They are also very good at explaining the different options.

God no, I'd never have put him through that - he was 18 and it was about keeping him comfortable and giving him quality of life which I believe we did. He had medication crushed in his food so it wasn't invasive at all. We did try to syringe the frusemide into his mouth but found out he could spit like a camel and I ended up covered in it!

In the end he we believe he had a blood clot in his back legs. The vet gave us the option of taking him home and seeing if he improved or putting him to sleep and we chose the latter, he wasn't going to suffer. Our vets were very good, they never pushed us into anything.

I'm so glad your dog is still going strong.

It’s what happens in any privatised medicine.

The vets are companies set up to make a profit. So they want to charge high costs that they then bill the insurance companies.

The insurance companies are also set up to generate profit that is not a flat fee, but a % of cost model. So the more the vet’s charge, the more profit the health insurance company makes.

So the vets and insurance companies collude to charge as much as possible. The only thing keeping them in check is competition between vets but we know the BVA thinks vets are underpaid and pushes all vets to increase their prices.

No, they won’t. They are happy to simply increase insurance premiums. The higher the costs, the more profit they rake in. There’s no extra costs to process insurance claims for £50 vs £500.

My local vets have been attacked so much they are now too cautious to suggest tests and treatment that they know are needed.
My dog was clearly in some pain and she asked me permission to prescribe him painkillers and said it was my choice.
She also said 'oh it could be x but it would need tests and sedation' and looked at me. I said okay, should we do that? She talked me out of it so much we didn't do it.
A month later he was still in pain and I returned to ask for the tests and she asked me over and over if I was okay with it as it would cost quite a bit.
I told her I trusted her professional judgement and she sighed and said ' thank you, we have to be so careful as people refuse to pay, yes my professional advice is to do it but like anything I can't promise it will find the issue'.
They did the tests and she was 100% right. Fixed it with antibiotics that cost us £3.