To think vet fees are taking advantage?

[Catlady332]

There is making a financial commitment to a pet, and then there is paying extortionate fees.
I pay monthly for a vet healthcare plan for my cat who is older, and this is supposed to cover certain things and include discounts.
They suspect he has a thyroid issue and needs a blood test, and I've been quoted £250 for the blood test.
I think these fees are extortionate and taking advantage. This is in the north West, as I said I know pet ownership is a financial commitment but I'm worried about having to pay these sorts of costs regularly.

I have had to start the whole course again. It was only £5 extra, and no big deal.

Overall, the cost of human private healthcare is either equal or more expensive than animal though.

I wrote the post before yours and said that an emergency vet appointment here costs the equivalent of £100, so why are they so expensive in the UK? We have the same qualified people here - although I've only ever seen a vet here, they don't usually drag a nurse out with them.

When I first started out an out of hours call out would be your covered by regular day vet who would be called out of bed to do their best within their skill set, assuming they weren’t already out calving a cow. Despite the cost to the client, out of hours work was always a drain on the practice, lost money and burned vets out.

These days most out of hours clinics are staffed with vets/nurses with extra critical care qualifications and experience, paid to be up all night, taking care of hospitalised patients and seeing emergencies. These clinics have the kind of specialist equipment you may see used in a human emergency department - trauma ultrasound scanning, blood typing and transfusion supplies, blood testing for CRP, coagulation factors,, blood gases, even CT scanners in some centres. Even factors such as security and safety lone-working has changed. Having this staff and equipment has massively improved care and survival rates for critically ill and injured animals, but does come with significant investment and running costs. I have friends who are emergency/critical care specialists and it blows your mind how good they are.

The downside is, for the client who does only need to see a vet out of hours for a bit of cystitis or a bad ear, the olden days, half-asleep GP vet option doesn’t exist any longer. To be fair, this echoes human medicine where smaller minor injury units and midwife led birth centres have given way to fewer but bigger centralised hospital units.

We could do with vets who only do the cheaper kind of care. That way you are not effectively been charged for expensive equipment you are never going to use

Yes, you can claim on your insurance for this. My cat has the same issues, I’m £329 per round of bloods though!

These do exist - near me there is Easipetcare, but big cities will have them. Budget pratices have not been as successful as you might think, possibly because people don’t like to admit that they are choosing ‘inferior care’ for their pets…

There’s also minimum standards that practices now have to meet, set by the regulator of the veterinary profession (RCVS) and the regulator of medicines (VMD). When I qualified we used bottles of antibiotic injections gathering dust on the shelf because they were so old; now we have to discard everything after 28 days open (this is obviously a great thing for the safety of the patient, but means costs go up).

It is always worth having a chat with the vet and being upfront about your budget. Vets honestly see the whole spectrum from thousands of pounds of surgery and a fortnight in hospital’ to ‘put him down cos he keeps getting itchy ears’ so it isn’t going to shock us, and it means we won’t start discussing MRI scans with you if it’s definitely out of the question.

Bear in mind that as a rule vets aren’t loaded so we do understand the concept of care being expensive - I wouldn’t be making my kids homeless to pay for the cat’s treatment and I wouldn’t expect my clients to either. Treating on a budget might mean prioritising one problem over another, or using an older drug with more side effects, or not getting a firm diagnosis but treating the most likely one, but in many cases the outcome for the pet can be just fine.

Can you imagine how much the higher level vets would then charge for complicated cases, when their daily 'bread and butter' cases that support their practices had been taken away from them?

You'd better be hoping you didn't need more complicated care then ... !

Oh yes, as others have said, many vets may look independent but are actually part of huge chains with central costs (and shareholders) to pay for.

Previous owner seems to have had a wake up call and realises he needs treatment. She would like to have him back.. I've offered to pay half the initial treatment costs and fortunately her vets are cheaper than mine.
It's a shame, but at least he'll be back to a familiar home.