(Veterinary) Bill confusion….

[Blueemeraldagain]

My cat has just come back from a two night stay at an emergency vets. I am happy to report he is recovering from his blocked urinary tract and seems to be doing well.

Where I need a little help is with the bill (not asking for money!!). When my brother dropped the cat off he paid a £600 deposit and when I picked him up I paid £1,709.37. I have been given a printed invoice (I will include a photo). My question is does the TOTAL OUTSTANDING £-600 mean we owe them or they owe us or something else?? If we owed them more, they would have surely mentioned it but I hate to think they have essentially “overcharged” us £600.

It would be worth checking if the original balance brought forward (£600) is actually £600, or was £1200 less the £600 deposit your brother paid.

The £623 + £485 is the £1,100 so they definitely owe you at least the -£600 detailed on the invoice.

But ask for a breakdown of the balance carried forward just to check the original deposit was applied to that!

Hmm, maybe ... I assumed the initial deposit of £600 was part of the previous bill that resulted in a balance of £623.68. So a bill of £1223.68 less that deposit. The initial deposit wouldn't be detailed on a second bill, would it?

This is the only bill/paperwork I’ve been given aside from the medication instructions but I will check in with my brother when he gets home at 9 to see if he was given any paperwork, he didn’t mention any but he is autistic so doesn’t always think to mention things that neurotypical people think are obvious.

I’ll also call the vet office back tomorrow morning and see if they can go through the bill with me on the phone if need be.

At the top of the bill, it says that £623.68 has been carried forward. It also looks as if the items you have paid for refer to the second day of the two day stay.

It does sound as if there is a previous bill.

It is totally possible there is another bill. However, my brother dropped the cat off (11am or so Sunday) and was told he would definitely need to stay that night and they would phone with any updates the next day (Monday). I rang Monday afternoon and was told he needed to stay in another night and we couldn’t visit and I picked the cat up on Tuesday evening; so there was no opportunity for my brother or I to have been given a first bill. My brother did say something about a verbal estimated cost he was given when he was leaving so maybe he has some paperwork around that.

Call them and ask for a fully itemised bill for the whole stay. You haven’t said if your cat was operated on or not which would push the price up if it was and there will be an out of hours emergency charge as well as it was the weekend. Did your brother get an estimate of costs when he took your cat in? That bill is only itemised for 7th, there should be other itemised bills for 5th and 6th.

Our billing system itemises each item per day. It could be if an emergency vet has been on someone has entered a separate bill on the Sunday then another bill has been raised on the Monday but the initial payment hasn’t come off the Sunday bill. That happens a lot if we have locum emergency vets covering the practice at the weekends.

Yep that bill is day 2.
Day 1 will be something like
OOH consultation
Blood profile
IV admin/setup - fluids 1st day
sedate/GA and urinary catheterise tomcat
Admit/hospitalise day 1
3 x vetergesic (or possibly comfortan)

Good luck Hector, I hope he pees freely from now on! Don't be afraid to ask them about preventative strategies to reduce the risk of it happening again. If you fancy a bit of googling, "FLUTD" is the search term you're after.

Those items only relate to one day - there will be another itemised list somewhere for the previous days, that's why the numbers don't add up.

I suspect the total bill was 1700
You paid 1700
The 600 your brother paid was likely added to your account as a floating credit and not allocated (deducted) from the final total.

Hope Hector is peeing freely now 😊

Yeah, Hector has had on going UTI issues since my mum passed away. He’s on a wet, urinary care diet, we have cat water fountains, an indoor cat tree and a large garden he has access to 6am-10pm, we have feliway plug ins and have just (as of this weekend) started him on an anti-anxiety medication. I don’t know what else we can do!

My brother has just got home and apparently does have some paperwork 😆so let’s see what this says…

Right, he has a very detailed estimate for a urethral blockage that has sections for anaesthesia, consultation, general, and lab tests. It is itemised and had a total per section. The grand total is £1,278.31. Given that we have paid just over £1000 more than that I think I will just call and ask for a full itemised bill tomorrow.

So, that is the estimate ... but is it also for 'hospital stays' etc?

And where has the carried over balance come from? Surely there must have been another invoice for that because an estimate is just that; it's not a firm amount for payment.

I’m afraid I’m giving as much as I can understand from the paperwork I have. If there was another invoice we haven’t been given it as no one was allowed at the vet between drop off (estimate given) and pick up (when I was given the bill pictured) and that’s it.

Under “general” there are 12 different ‘1.00X hospitalisation…..’ entries.

I suspect that there may be another bill somewhere in the system - maybe as @MistletoeAndWhiteWine explained, it was a locum vet who made the initial entries on the system and the invoice for £1223.68 (carried forward and the £600 deposit) hasn't been passed on to you. This seems more than possible if Hector was admitted on Sunday.

Obviously, vet fees are expensive, and we all know that, but it does seem eye-wateringly high. I suppose the overnight stays rack up the treatment costs.

Yeah, it’s all a bit of a mess really. I’ll call again tomorrow and get to the bottom of it. Another of our cats has to have dental surgery next Thursday (inherit your mum’s 4 aging cats whose insurance lapsed while mum was sick they said, it’ll be fun they said) so I could do with £1200 back if we’re entitled to it!
I’ll update when I can!

We have older cats who have had teeth extracted. £££, so hope you do get a refund.

Under “general” there are 12 different ‘1.00X hospitalisation…..’ entries

This is often an entry made on the customer account if a vet or vet nurse tends to your animal outwith hours. I can only speak for our practice, we use it so the vet who comes on in the morning change over knows what’s happened the night before. They can read back and see what drugs have been administered, what dressings have been changed etc. It’s not something we charge for but many do. All practices work differently, some charge and some don’t for the amount of times they care for animals out of hours.

any update? I'm invested

Hello again! The vet office emailed me a full detailed invoice and it turns out that the previous two days did just happen to add up to exactly £600, the amount we paid for the deposit.
They do owe us the £-600 in my first post and they forgot to take the deposit off but they didn’t add on a deposit by accident! They agreed to a refund straight away and were very apologetic.
Hector is also much more lively today!

Glad you got it sorted @Blueemeraldagain and I hope Hector makes a full recovery.

I'm glad you've got it sorted, so realise this doesn't really matter now, but if the previous treatment cost exactly £600 then why is £623.68 carried over at the top of the bill? I'm still confused 🤯