Vet surgery costs - any vets honest thoughts?

[AliceM456]

Is the price of surgery via veterinary referrals much higher recently?

I am wondering if my extortionate quote given is 'normal' or if it's artificially high due to the governments regulations coming in next year to make the industry fairer in respect of vet fees?

Looking for honest opinions close to the industry if poss?

Ta :)

I’d love to hear some honest opinions and experiences from vets too. I have a friend who just left a practice that had been swallowed up by a chain a few years ago, to move to a small local independent, as she couldn’t deal with the business practices. It was definitely all about making money. If the pet was insured, they would exploit that as far as possible. Vets were pitted against each other in terms of how much revenue they were bringing in. It sounded absolutely awful.

You haven’t said what procedure you were quoted for or how much the quote was, so it’s hard for anyone in the sector to comment!

I’ve just paid £187 for my cat to be spayed and microchipped.

I’ve just paid over £300 for the same procedure for my dog. Independent vet surgeries are hard to find these days so I feel tied to the practice I’m registered with. I don’t insure my dogs after the age of nine because insurers don’t pay out for most things after that age. I put the premium in a savings account instead.

Last week I paid 2,256 as my cat had a blocked bladder and it was emergency surgery in the middle of the night and then three days aftercare. Stung a bit….

£10k twice for PPDH £2k mark up + £8k surgery

The chains definitely exploit the insurance. Mine tried to get me to pay 30 quid for a tube of that lick stuff you put on their paws for furballs because i mentioned insurance. I had to tell her I've an excess before insurance steps in.

Vet here. We don't exploit insurances as this would be illegal.
If someone is insured it is easier to give all the care needed rather than doing very basic stuff due to restrictions with available money from the owners which in a lot of cases does not amount to dealing with a case properly.
£ 2200 for a blocked cat that is hospitalised seems okay to me depending on what was done. In good practices you have 24/7 nursing care to look after animals and vets around all the time. They need to be paid. As does other support staff, equipment, premises etcetc.
Referral places are more expensive as you get a specific specialists to deal with cases. Specific to your pets condition and needs.
However corporates do regularly charge more generally than independent practices. But it is irrelevant whether you are insured or not.

Yes, and same for the cat spay. You will most likely have 2 nurses involved and a vet. It will take about 1 hour all in for a cat and 1.5 hours for a bitch. This includes all medication, care and checks before and then prepping for surgery, blood pressure monitored, breathing rate, heart rate, oxygen saturation etc etc, all noted every 5 minutes, then surgical kit, suture material drapes etcetc, then nurse recovering animal and regularly checking temperature, etcetc, feeding, caring, taking out for wees.
By the way I am 21 years qualified and earn less than 50000. After a 5 year uni course. Doing countless extra hours out of hours etc.

Similar cost here - without the emergency surgery. The emergency vet where he stayed overnight was the biggest part of the bill, around £1,800.

Thank you for your comments I'm not underestimating the work that goes into veterinary care and surgery but on the other hand, we were given a ball park of £3k and then the specialist referrals came back at £10k it just isn't affordable and has made me question the reason behind this kind of difference. And whether to try and hold off surgery until next year, otherwise we will focus on quality of his time with us or worst case, take him to a charity to make a decision about his future which is a really rough decision to have to make. Insurance won't cover as congenital.

I mean, I was grateful they saw him right away but horrified at the cost. Not insured and he’s 11 now with blocked bladder occurring a couple of times a year.
I had to borrow from my sisters.

You can liase with your vets and also get quotes from other practices/ referral places? This is your right! We shop around at times for referrals and get 2 or 3 quotes for clients.

The fact we don't have to pay for our own health care is a significant part of why veterinary care seems so expensive IMO

Yes we are so lucky I can't fathom having to face this kind of thing for a child it doesn't bare thinking about.

Thank you yes, there's still some room for further referrals which I'll definitely pursue

I appreciated all that the vet staff did for my dog on the day and the follow up appointments. Everything was itemised on the bill, so I realise that a lot is involved in the care of our pets. Everything is so much more expensive than when I owned my first dog 30 years ago. Nurses should definitely be paid more for what they do and the hours they put in😊

Yes, and I am the vet, not a nurse.

Vet nurse here , i work in an independent practice .
We have never ever had a pricing system according to if a client is insured or not ,but the veterinary world is a small one and i know of other practices who have charged insured clients more in the past, this was in a time when prices were less transparent.
With respect I do believe that the general public don't have much insight into the many different surgeries and procedures carried out in a veterinary practice and the differing costs involved ,i think you can compare this to the nhs and how little we know of the endless ops and procedures they perform daily, we also have little idea of how much these cost.
That said i do believe the corporate run chains have abused their positions and put money before morals , this behaviour has sadly tarnished the veterinary world in general and we have all been labeled the same to some degree.
People are now much more aware of this and independent practices are becoming a much better prospect.
An independent also has a lot more flexibility when choosing the right path for the animals treatment and more likelihood of 'tailoring' things according to your financial limitations.
Regarding an estimate given by a specialist you would be totally reasonable to do your own research and you may find one that is cheaper, you are not obliged to use the specialist your vet has suggested.
Another way to cut costs is to buy a written prescription from a vet and source the meds from a vmd registered supplier if a pomv product (requiring a prescription) other products a vet supplies can often be bought from amazon and pet drug suppliers online.
I think people need to have the confidence to speak frankly to their vet about what they can and can't afford and how far they want to go ,absolute clarity on both sides is always needed.
I hope the future changes in regulations are a positive thing and that confidence is restored in our mostly wonderful profession filled with amazing people who go the extra mile every single day because the ultimate reason they are in this job is because they simply love the animal kingdom.

£160 today for an allergy injection and ear cream for an infection - it seems a lot but worth it to ease his discomfort and I guarantee it would be a lot more at previous vets plus pressure to yet again run allergy tests

I paid 3.5k for that 6 years ago, no 3 days aftercare that was just surgery!

Really pissed me off that you have insurance but you're lucky if you get half the bill paid.

I'm a vet. I offer the same options whether insured or not, I don't even ask if animals are insured when I make my estimates/plans. I usually offer Plan A/B/C. I don't presume what people will and won't pay and that's why I have a conversation about it. I work for a corporate and we are big on contextualised care - not just gold standard/expensive care.

I'm 16 years qualified and never seen a PPDH in real life. I couldn't do the procedure - not even close - and there are probably not that many vets that can. £10000 is a lot but I'm not shocked at that. Back in the day more GP vets would "have a go" at surgeries like that for cheap and clients would be understanding if it didn't work out - "do your best and thank you for trying" - but people are less tolerant of that now and want an expert to do it.

In fact, people's expectations in general have gone through the roof. As mentioned above, when I first qualified I would do fairly complicated surgeries to my best ability and then the animals would be left alone in the kennels overnight afterward or sent straight home! Most of the time they would live but sometimes they wouldn't. But the prices reflected that. I don't begrudge people this, but people now want human-level healthcare for their animals (intensive care, 24 hour hospitals, complicated procedures, interventional radiography, endoscopy, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, root canals, cutting edge technology) - that's fine but it costs - a lot! Both the equipment and the training.

I just got quoted a grand for taking two teeth out, on a cat that’s happily eating well.

We recently had a bill for around £580 for our cat to have 5 teeth removed at a brilliant independent vet. We paid the excess of £110, insurance paid the rest

We had a cat who suffered with bladder blockages, the vet advised us to feed him on Hills Feline CD and give him cystaid if we saw signs of him struggling to wee. This first happened when he was young (1-2 years old) and he was in the vet’s for a couple of days receiving treatment. We followed the vet’s advice and never fed anything other than the recommended food and he never had a blockage again. Signs he was starting to block were sorted by giving the cystaid capsules. He was finally PTS at 17. Have you been given any feeding advice to prevent the frequent blockages?