Out of Hours vets - fees

[Cadenza12]

Long story but I had to phone the out of hours vets over the weekend. The cost for the appointment was £350 which seems extortionate to me. No treatment. I'm guessing that most people pay even if its a struggle because let's face it no one phones for fun. Vets Now seems to have cornered the market in my area. Or maybe it's reasonable?

@Needanadultgapyearthat is a very good point!

I fully agree with @Needanadultgapyear. We are incredibly lucky that our closest out of hours is at the Royal Vet College only a few miles away.

We had to go there a couple of Saturdays ago when our cat Rasputin has a stroke (my animals always get sick on weekends, it’s like they just know lol).

It was £200 just to walk through the door.

After being treated for 6hrs, he did deteriorate and had to be PTS. We had to pay £500 as an advance to stay to be put on oxygen overnight (they initially thought he’d become diabetic with his sugars being so high) and scans. There was also a senior vet who the vet called to confirm a tiny, almost imperceptible clot in Spute’s brain which could’ve easily been a scan artifact, so that knowledge bank was absolutely worth every penny. I can’t fault any treatment our animals have received there, and the actual PTS was calm, peaceful & so gently done it was beautiful. An absolutely amazing vet & supporting team.

Bloody expensive but worth every penny to treat, diagnose & sadly euthanise Ras.

Vets are private businesses so they can charge what they think the market will bear just like hotels, restaurants etc. The cost of having a pet isn’t a secret so you just have to factor it in when buying one. They have a lot of high fixed costs and have to pay people who have studied long and hard a commensurate salary.

We don't pay anything extra for OOH - even on bank holidays, Sundays or at 11pm.

I paid £1100 last month for my dog to go to Vets Now at 3am with a herniated disc, he was screaming in pain and I couldn’t wait until the morning. They gave him multiple pain meds and kept him until 10am when he was transferred to the vet hospital (which cost another 4k but that’s another story!). I don’t begrudge it, but why do my dogs ALWAYS get sick at night?!! 😫

Bollocks , I’ve just finished a complaint with our local Vets Now over the care of our cat earlier this year , they did bog all for him overnight except doing his obs and allegedly taking some blood and he died following surgery at our usual vets the following day . The care was appalling but there was no way he was getting surgery in the night as they had 1 vet on so he couldn’t be tied up in surgery . We have now changed vets just to ensure we don’t have to use Vets Now for our OOH care , which is a shame as I’d been with the practice for 40+ years . I’m not bothered about the cost , we paid them £1700 to not look after our lovely cat , I’m bothered about the standard of care or lack of it .

I paid over £2,500 in June as my cat had a blocked bladder at 10pm. He needed “surgery” which actually turned out to be a catheter inserted and him being put on a drip. The breakdown for the procedure was £13.00 PER MINUTE, plus 24 hours aftercare which was just monitoring urine output and a calmer. Joke but what can you do?

My dog is only here because of VetsNow. Yes the first vet we saw didn’t diagnose him correctly but then dogs can’t tell you exactly what is wrong but the second time we went back the same night after he deteriorated further the vet realised how serious it was and surgery saved him. We had a very large bill but was insured but after all a couple of hours of emergency surgery at 2am on a bank holiday it wasn’t surprising.

The thing is everyone complains about not seeing their GP or waiting ages to get a hospital appointment. I am actually grateful that instead of relying on a rubbish NHS for our pets we can pay to see a vet and therefore can get same day appointments or emergency care.

I completely agree. I had animals for many years, until recently, and am still in contact with veterinary surgeons because of someone else’s animals. It’s a really hard job and crushingly competitive. The vets I came across all worked hard. Some ran their own OOH, some used a nighttime service, others changed between the two over the years. It’s a wake up call for what we take for granted with the NHS, to which I also feel gratitude