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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think out of hours vets fees are outrageous?!

177 replies

sensuallettuce · 29/04/2012 18:10

Have arrived home from lunch to find cat in pain and passing blood.

Phoned PSDA out of hours line. It's £135 for a consultation BEFORE any treatment. It's normally £30 (so more than 4 times the normal cost!!) Snooty woman on phone informed me if I am on housing or council tax benefit I would be elegible for help but as I am not on any of those I need to pay the fee or not be seen, and the well being of my cat is my responsibility which I agree is true and I can normally afford the £30.

It's the end of the month and I don't have a spare £135 + in the bank so my cat will have to wait until tomorrow.

AIBU to think this inflated "out of hours" price is outrageous?!

OP posts:
flyingspaghettimonster · 30/04/2012 17:38

Google has some useful info on the amount of kiddie calpol per weight you can give to different animals... I know we used it for a chinchilla that lost a toe... But that was because our vet wouldn't treat exotics :( glad you got her seen because it is so painful, and can lead to bad toilet behaviour if cat associates litter tray with pain...

Atreegrowsinbrooklyn · 30/04/2012 17:40

Sensual

Please, don't. I'm not on your case. Smile

ithasgonetotheopera · 30/04/2012 17:48

I tried not to read this thread (as someone who is very nearly a vet), but gave in, and finally joined mumsnet because I couldn't not comment:

PLEASE DO NOT GIVE CALPOL TO CATS

Paracetamol is highly toxic to cats, their livers can't break it down. Just 2 tablets will kill a cat (smaller doses will damage its liver).

ithasgonetotheopera · 30/04/2012 17:58

On vets pay:

Median UK salary is £33k (start on around £22k). Average hours are from 9am to 7-8pm once the paperwork is done, plus a couple of nights a week on call (most rotas seem to be 1 in 4, so nearly 2 nights a week, plus a weekend every month). My student loan is around £40,000 (this will be going up dramatically for the vet students entering this year).

By law each practice has to provide out of hours cover, either by themselves, or by outsourcing (like the OPs). The outsourcing practices tend to charge more than your normal vet - as you've discovered - because they can't make their profit on the day side of business like general practices do - as someone else said, most practices don't make any profit whatsoever on providing out-of-hour services -they just have to do it legally. Even if they don't get called out that night, they're still paying someone to be on duty.

I wish we could charge less, I think most vets hate the money side of the job and wish we didn't have to deal with it.

thevetswife · 30/04/2012 18:04

To be fair I can't say I know many poor vets .....

How many do you know and how many tell you what they earn?

Want to know what my OH earns after 23 years in practice? About a grand less than a midwife consultant and about the same as a police sergeant. The big difference is of course that he doesn't get anything on top of that for unsocial hours and no chance of overtime.

A newly qualified GP makes about twice what he does and gets extra pay for being on call as well.

Yeah it's good money but if he was a doctor he'd be well into six figures now.

ithasgonetotheopera · 30/04/2012 18:19

Regardless of the above, it is a lot of money for most people (including me!), and I can see why you left it until Monday Sensual!

Sparklingbrook · 30/04/2012 18:22

I think a lot of people wouldn't realise how expensive OOH vet care is until they need it. Sad

It was more than double what it would have been to get our cat seen on a Sunday, I was Shock

Original poster
sensuallettuce · 30/04/2012 18:44

No one is being forced to be a vet? Hmm

OP posts:
gordyslovesheep · 30/04/2012 18:45

so how is the cat??????

thevetswife · 30/04/2012 18:54

No they aren't forced to be a vet you're right. I also don't know a vet that chose the job for the money which is just as well.

They get no funding from anywhere else and they have to make a living or there'd be nobody to treat your pets. If you want an out of hours plumber or electrician you pay more. Why would you expect a vet to drive to the surgery to open up specially for you for the same price as normal working hours?

If you'd come to our practice you'd have been asked for a deposit of £10-£20 and terms would have been discussed. The specialist out of hours vets have different charging structures.

Sparklingbrook · 30/04/2012 19:05

Well I am with the Companion Care vets at Pets at Home. they are open 7 days a week which cuts down the OOH hours. But OOH consultations do start at eighty two pounds, but hopefully that would be middle of the night stuff.

Original poster
sensuallettuce · 30/04/2012 19:25

I still think more than 4 times is outrageous - when I worked 60 hrs a week in catering extremely anti social hours and shitty work I didn't even get double time!!

OP posts:
AhsataN · 30/04/2012 20:32

my horse decided to poke its eye in the stable on a sunday at 12.10. i called a vet as it was pretty serious and they came out to see her. before they had even got out of the car it cost me £70 then £40 consultation. if i had called 15 early it would have been £30 for the call out and consultation.

i had to have my chinchilla put to sleep and because i called 5 mins after opening time in floods of tears explaining the situation they quoted me £90!!!
i declined and found another vet who was still open who charged me £9.00.
i think vets charge a fortune because they can because most people do not know how to treat an animal.
i will only call a vet for my horse if A) it cannot stand or B) it it in immense pain or bleeding. most other ailments i can treat at home with great success.

lisad123 · 30/04/2012 20:35

Our dog was attacked as a pup on a Sunday walk. He was covered in blood and vet had to be called to the surgery. £135 before any treatment Sad

Sparklingbrook · 30/04/2012 20:44

What I don't get is why daytime on a Sunday is presumably charged the same as 3am in the morning. Confused

Babylon1 · 30/04/2012 23:43

Sparklingbrook, Because it is still OOH, and the cost of the premises being open and staffed is still the same at 3am on a sunday as it is at 3pm on a sunday.

Sparklingbrook · 01/05/2012 10:03

Mmm. Well Companion Care Vets is open at 3pm on a Sunday, so hopefully Sparkling Cat will be ill 'in hours'.

CheesyWellingtons · 01/05/2012 10:46

sensual I'm struggling really hard not to be rude here. I think you are missing the point a little. 'I still think more than 4 times is outrageous - when I worked 60 hrs a week in catering extremely anti social hours and shitty work I didn't even get double time!!'.

I also think your logic seems a little flawed 'Am I now responsible for vet suicide as well as being a bad pet owner?' Where does anyone suggest that?

My ex-boyfriend's father was a vet. He worked through so many nights - his entire working life was like having a young baby. It was a small practice, so he got about one week-end a month when he wasn't on call. He missed most of his children's school activities and hardly ever managed an entire Christmas Day without being called out. All this for a fraction of what a doctor earns.

AhsataN so at what time should the vet have put up his prices? 20 minutes after normal hours, 25 minutes? Or should they charge the same all the times, so that they take home even less that the paultry £32K mentioned above. [And if one person says £32K is a lot of money, I shall scream. Not for one of the most difficult university courses to get on it's not. Not for someone with some of the best A level results].

bejeezus · 01/05/2012 11:16

most vets will arrange a 'sunday afternoon surgery' where all the pets that need seeing (or the owners really WANT them to be seen) are 'collected' into a 1/2 hour/1 hour/whatever time slot- so that the vet can come and see them all at the same time. This avoids the vet travelling backwards and forwards to the surgery umpteen times. These consults are usually cheaper than the genuine emergency-seen straight away OOH consults.

Part of the pricing, is of course to act as a deterent

One particularly ridiculous owner that I had to deal with when I was a VN got very cross after she phoned at 1am because she spotted a flea on her dog. And the dog slept on her daughters bed. She couldnt possibly move the dog off the childs bed into another room. And she NEEDED flea treatment NOW because a flea WAS an emergency in HER house.

(very unethical of me to write that-she could be reading this. I dont care, Im not a VN anymore Yipee!)

Lizcat · 01/05/2012 13:29

I think the point being missed is large numbers of us vets work a 60 hour week and then get up in the middle of the night and on Sundays to see sick animals. Yes no one made us be vets, but with the level of qualification we have we could have been doctors, lawyer, accountants or many other high paying jobs. Relative to our level of qualification and skill we receive less renumeration. I started work at 8am yesterday and will finish at 5pm today and 26hours into that shift I had extreme physical exertion to bring a calf into the world. The vast majority of us work really hard often without breaks, accept payment often over years, provide comfort, support and empathy for our clients.

GrimmaTheNome · 01/05/2012 13:50

We rang in the middle of the night when our last dog was dying... nowt they could do, but no charge.

We rang one bank holiday when this dog had eaten an entire peace lily... vet looked stuff up and gave advice ... no charge.

We rang on DDs birthday when dog ate a quarter of a chocolate orange - vet looked up figures, and reassured us he'd be fine. no charge.

Noticed he had an abcess fri morning, got appointment that afternoon... if I could just find a GP like that for the price vets charge, I'd be happy!

AhsataN · 01/05/2012 13:54

no i look at a vet having compassion in the fact an animal was suffering and needed to euthanized. shame they lost all of my custom and i went to another vet who was fantastic. £90 to put a chinchilla down. very steep considering it costs £100 to have a horse destroyed and the body taken away.

ScarlettInSpace · 01/05/2012 13:57

I was going to come on here and comment about how I balked a little last night when I rang Vets Now at the £123 appt fee, but after a very nice chat with the vet on the phone, her advice to feed small amounts of bland food, give lots of cuddles and keep very close eye on puppy for another hour or 2 before deciding whether to take him in worked wonders and I didn't need to take him at all. They then faxed my vets to advise of my call who rang me at 8.30 this morning to check he was ok and to see if I needed a regular appt.

So despite my Shock at the fee, the service I got from Vets Now for free was excellent...

However the thread seems to have gone off on a totally different tangent now so I'm sure if my input is relevant any more Grin

OrmIrian · 01/05/2012 14:04

Glad she's OK now sensual

Just checked my vets website. They have an OOH number that is the same as the normal one and a 'duty vet' so i think that means they do their own OOH. Might still be expensive though. I love our vets. They are all very friendly and competent and compared to the one my parents use, very reasonable.

OrmIrian · 01/05/2012 14:06

Not to mention I had to cancel my last saturday am appoitment for one of the cats because she'd done a runner Hmm They made me another one for later in the week and didn't charge a cancellation fee. Which I was surprised about.