Vet's charges

[winkywinkola]

My lab had a weepy eye. Went to vet. Got drops. Suspected allergic reaction. £47 all in for five minutes and a wee bottle of drops. What i expected. Come back in a week, said the vet.

Today I go back. I'm in there literally 90 seconds. Vet checks eyes, all fine, bye. And they want another £21.50.

Am I being naive to feel conned by this further charge?

I didn't say all vets were money grabbing.

I trust mine to make decisions based on what my pets actually need.

I have however worked at a vets where the practice manager was asking vets/nurses to try and "encourage" the clients them to have food/blood tests.

And to recommend one particular pet insurance.

It's so depressing that people don't seem to have any understanding of what it means to be a vet. I went out with a vet for two years. He was newly qualified so made the lowest salary in the practice and had huge Uni fees - it was not clear how he could ever save enough money to buy into a practice. He was given a cottage to live in as part of his salary but it was next to the practice so had to do all overnight emergencies and pop in to give clients drugs at the weekends, etc. About once every 3 months he had a horse that was so poorly he literally slept with it in the stable overnight to make sure it survived.

He was on call one night a week, on first call (cannot leave the house) one weekend a month and on second call (has to stay within an hour's drive of the house) a second weekend a month - on top of this if there was a serious emergency like a colic operation which required two vets he could still get called out to deal with another client. People had no consideration, I remember one time he got called out on a Sunday night for a donkey that had been poorly and refusing to move for three days but the owner had waited till literally 2am to decide it was an emergency. We had to drive through the snow, dig a path through the snow to the donkey in the field and carry it into a stable (luckily it was a very small donkey!), all despite the fact the owner had two years of unpaid bills with the surgery.

For all of this he had already had to be top of his class, he had fought for a place at Uni in the most competitive subject and had to spend his Uni years studying non-stop. As a professional he had to keep specialising, keep studying, going to conferences and trying to do a little bit of research just to keep up with new knowledge.

Giles The PM probably recommended the pet insurer that was easiest to deal with and less likely to argue about paying out.

Petplan or M&S are generally thought to be good/fair, with E&L in particular considered to be bad and more likely to not pay claims. Unfortunately, many owners choose pet insurance on price alone.

Practices won't want situations where an animal receives ££££s of treatment that the owner expects the insurer to cough up for, and then they don't.

The practice we use has a stand of some prescription foods in the waiting room. I have never been offered or "sold" any.

Like many people involved in rescue, I can also recount numerous examples where vets have "forgotten" to charge, only charged for meds, done work FOC, or offered significant discounts to rescues - particularly to severe neglect/cruelty cases. This is often not publicised, but is very common, and for me personally, completely refutes the "all vets are money grabbing bastards" line.

We have four older dogs currently including fosters and have previously fostered, so we are back and forth to the practice very regularly. Our current vet will often offer to see one of our four if I'm bringing another one in, FOC. She doesn't have to do this, I don't expect it, but it's yet another example of her bending over backwards to provide a good service to clients, particularly regulars. We were there a lot over Christmas getting a dressing changed regularly - she was happy to see us before surgery officially opened because she knows our schedule - you can't put a price on that kind of flexibility and going the extra mile. I see how hard she and her colleagues work - I think she is worth every penny.

My vet recommended a pet insurance company to me, but only because I asked and she is best placed to know which ones are least likely to mess owners - and vets around. As it happened it was the company I had already pretty much decided to go with, so she just confirmed my research.

I have never been offered prescription food for any of my dogs, despite having some with specific nutritional requirements. I discuss their needs with my vet, do my own research and make a decision based on their advice and the results of my research. However, if I was a less experienced owner I assume my vet might guide me towards complete foods that meet the dog's needs without me needing to understand all the nutritional ins and outs. Personally I don' like prescription foods, but they have their place for some people and their dogs.

Like Scuttle, my vet will often see my two dogs together and only charge one consultation fee. My dogs adore her and are very good judges of character.

I'm not saying there are no dodgy vets out there, obviously there are, we had a thread on here recently which was a prime example. I do wonder about some of the large, budget, chain practices, but can't really comment, as I've never used them.

In my experience though, most vets are lovely and do the job for the love of the animals they treat. I have even taken one of my dogs to a vet while we were on holiday for stitch removal and despite not being a client at their practice or buying anything from them, they didn't charge us a penny and even gave us some treats for our dog.

Hello everyone
The op said she doesn't resent paying the consultation and medication fee. It was the fact she had to pay for another consult fee for something, in our practice, the nurse would have done as part of the initial cost. I disagree that it is standard to charge for non invasive, non consult follow ups and I have lived in three counties and have had 5 different vets over 20 years. I am am with medivet who charge if you cart in the waiting room and even they would not have charged for that follow up appointment.

One of my vets hung himself :(

As has been pointed out it is standard not to charge for predictable follow up procedures such as suture removal, that have already been factored into the initial cost, but not other follow up. What if they OP's dog had needed further treatment and a further follow-up, should that have been free as well? How many follow-ups do you get for free, given that a proportion will reveal serious problems that need to be re-examined and re-treated? If in two years' time the dog develops cataracts as a result of this eye injury is that a free follow-up consultation?

No. Of course further treatment shouldn't be free. Nobody suggested that at all.

But a quick look at a dog's eyes should not be charged IMO. As a reasonable person who is happy to pay her way, I felt that a charge in this case was excessive.

There is a real range of opinion on here. Interesting.

And it wasn't an eye injury. That was established in the first consultation. The vet said she is allergic to tree pollen. Hence the streaming eyes.

The problem is that vets could then prescribe something that wasn't needed to be able to justify the consultation fee, and you presumably would come away happier, even though your bill would be higher. At least the vet was honest with you.

I do understand your annoyance though.

Just out of interest, how much do you think a vet, say 5 years qualified, and working 1 weekend in three including nights, with no days off in lieu, and daytime 9 am to 6.30pm when not on call, gets paid?

If the vet thought the streaming eyes were due to tree pollen allergy, she/he would have needed to see if the treatment they gave your dog worked and assess the state of their eyes to see if their diagnosis was correct. If it hadn't been they would have had to reassess, work out what was wrong and remedicate.

I don't see a difference between paying for them to check your dog's eyes, finding their initial assessment was correct and the dog is on the right treatment and paying for them to suggest a different treatment, because the first one didn't work. At both appointments you are paying for the same professional expertise in assessing the condition of your dog's eyes. Regardless of how long it took, the only difference is be the final outcome.

I don't know how much they get paid. I'm sure it varies from practice to practice and neighbourhood to neighbourhood. I'm sure they work hard for their money.

The £21 follow up fee covers: the vet's time, training and expertise. The salaries of the support staff who don't bill you directly - vet nurses, reception staff, cleaners. The heating and lighting and business rates. Staff training. Upkeep of all equipment used. Indemnity insurance. Etc etc etc. It's not just a case of paying for some eye drops or some pills - there are so many hidden costs to your 10 minutes of the vet's time.

Most vets are employees, and don't have any particular interest in how much money the practice makes, so long as it keeps paying their salary. They are not on commission. Why would they charge you unnecessarily, or try to treat your animals when it wasn't needed? To be honest, if we were really "in it for the money", we'd never recommend flea or worm treatments, or neutering - lots more money to be made when people ignore the advice and suffer the consequences. I'm not saying there aren't rogue characters out there, but I've genuinely never met a vet who wasn't in it for the love of the animals first and foremost.

I didn't even get ten minutes for first consultation let alone the second.

So you can tell me all about what it costs to run a practice but that does not justify charging someone how I was charged because of all that. I think that's a rather peculiar argument. I have high running costs so I'm going to charge for every single very very brief follow up examination where there is no problem and the client has already paid for my diagnosis and treatment. . Okay. But your customers WILL be cheesed off.

Think about plumbers and builders too ... whenever we have someone to quote for work I always ask DP to think about what it 'should' cost (realistically). Their overheads are less too. It would be interesting for a vet to publish the hourly running costs before they even book appointments ... the other thing is that if you book an appointment then you may ask about other things 'while you're there'. I consider vet fees to be part of the 'running costs' of having animals. At least we can choose our vets ... I'm sure there are unscrupulous ones around, but unless you live in a very remote area you can always go elsewhere.

It costs me £1000 each day to open my practice front door this is just rent, heat, light and staff salaries. Having lab, x-ray equipment, anaesthetic machines, monitoring equipment and drugs costs more. Total spend for all of this is roughly £2,200 per day. This is without me the boss taking home a single penny as I am self employed so my income is the profit.

funny sketch about Vets

1MitchellMum, our practice recently had an assessment done by a vet practice management consultant (from Zoetis, the drug company which used to be Pfizer). She said it cost us £23 per 15mins per vet (our consult slot time) to be open (all vet nurse and support staff salaries paid, lights on etc). So for every consult slot charged at zero, we are losing £23.
We still do have a "consult no charge" fee priced at zero, but if you ever see that on a clinical record it's usually followed by some very strenuous justification by the vet, for the benefit of the practice manager.
We get periodic bollockings from the practice manager if she thinks we have too many zero charged consults and are underpricing work (almost every vet when doing surgery or dentistry charged by time "rounds down") but that's what practice managers are for. Left to our own devices the place would probably go bankrupt.

winkywinkola as has been pointed out to you, you had not 'already paid for diagnosis and treatment' as what you had paid excluded follow-ups. As has also been pointed out to you that the examination was brief because its result was negative is also irrelevant: could you please reply on whether you would have been willing to pay if the result was a further diagnosis? And if the dog needed another follow up after the further diagnosis, would you expect that for free, even if that was positive?

Thanks noddingoff, that's useful to know.

I said I would pay if further complications requiring expertise and vet's time would be required.

Sorry but I think it was a piss take.

Did you read what lonecat said? Why should you be seen for free?

noddingoff we frequently get told off for under-valuing ourselves:) If it was left to the nurses in particular we would go under in a week!

Blimey I would happily hand over £21.50 to a professional to have confirmation that my dogs eye sight is ok ( all 8 of them, dogs that is not eyes)

I cannot praise our vets enough: they treat what they can and refer to experts if needed, they hand out their personal phone number on Christmas day if out ancient cat got to ill to carry on - they have monitored our dogs heart throughout the weekend at their house for no charge, they took a foster dog to their house when the surgery had no electricity and monitored his progress at home. They argued with me over raw feeding and then went on a course and now promote it the clients, they have tolerated me being awkward and demanding titre testing and now offer it to any of us "Awkward clients". I luuuuvre our vets