Vets Emergency cost - AIBU

[Aretheyhavingalaugh]

I had to take my cat to the Vet yesterday as he wasn't going to the toilet or eating and then started vomiting. I called them for an emergency appointment which they said would cost £102 just to be seen, obviously its extortion, but I took him. When they saw him, they said he had a blocked bladder and without immediate treatment would die, they said this is a life threatening condition. The £102 consultation consisted of a few questions and the vet feeling his abdomen, they prepared an estimate which was £1824 to do the procedure, blood tests and scans. I told them I simply could not afford it. Upon looking at the estimate, they were charging £57 to admit him to the hospital ( take him upstairs) £40 for a bandage! £323 accommodation costs to keep him until 8am this morning ( more expensive than a hotel room in Mayfair) 1 specific kidney blood test was £170, bearing in mind, a human can get a full blood test for £95 privately. I told them I could not afford it and would have to take the cat elsewhere that was cheaper. They then managed to decrease the cost from £1824 to £863, taking off the blood tests, scans, making the accommodation slightly cheaper. It was still way too expensive, but if I didn't pay it, the cat would have died. I felt like they emotionally blackmailed me. When I got the very same cat neutered, it cost £65 which included the procedure, all the accommodation costs which was staying there the whole day, medication etc so how can they get away with charging this extortionate amount and basically holding me to ransom? By the way, the £102 consultation fee is on top of the £1800 they first quoted!

This seems reasonable to me. A family member is a vet and it was only the other day tbeh told me the average salary of a vet is £36.5k in the UK (that’s excluding Partners) and described it as a Cinderella profession. Vets have to work weekends, do out of hours including nights. All after 5 years study at university and two years as a new grad. It’s also a profession with really high suicide rates because it is really stressful and high pressured and unfortunately one that people seem to complain the most about price on! Medical treatment costs money and owning pets costs money.

I have my two dogs insured with Pet Plan costs over £100 a month for the two of them but no way would I go without.

I totally understand your frustration @Aretheyhavingalaugh but if it was out-of-hours appointment or weekend then the quote for the surgery would be higher as the vet on call would have to call the qualified nurse back in to assist with the operation etc/provide the anaesthesia and monitor the cats vitals etc. Blocked bladder can be very serious condition (I used to be a Vet nurse) & unfortunately you'll no doubt have to feed your cat a specialised (& expensive diet) for the rest of his life 😭 Its a shame you didn't have insurance as they may have covered the op plus some of the special diet. For context our older rescue cat spent a couple of nights in the hospital over NYE on a drip with blood tests and ultrasound etc and that cost £956 - and didn't involve any intrusive surgery at all AND they still couldn't work out why he was limping/ill etc. Good luck with your kitty. Really hope this was a one-off 🤞🤞

@cansu by law vets need to see all clients at least once a year in order to keep dispensing flea treatment/worming tablets etc. Usually taking them in for their yearly jabs means they can then get flea treatment without needing to be seen again.

My dog need emergency vet treatment as his poop was full of blood, he was lethargic and not eating.
it cost £3600 for the 2 nights - they had scanned his abdomen for blockages - non found.
they had him hooked to fluids all night to rehydrate him.
they kept him in 2 nights for observation.
I was lucky that I have pet insurance as I am not sure how I would have paid for it without.
turned out he’s allergic to chicken.

I haven't read through the whole thread so apologies if it has already been mentioned.

Personally, I would recommend pet insurance, however I do believe most insurers will not cover for pre existing illness so if this is likely to be a recurrence issue, it's unlikely they will cover you for anything related to it.

Completely agree with you OP.

absolute extortion

the veterinary profession is in absolute crisis with lack of staff because of attitudes exactly like yours. I managed a year working in a vets and couldn’t take much more of the moaning from people like you. It’s private healthcare and it’s something YOU should research before you get pets. I worked in an OOH service and the staff were advanced practitioners with extensive knowledge who cared a great deal for their patients. I suggest you look at the current wage offerings for qualified veterinary staff and see how much they actually make. Then take a look at the NOMV campaign and see just how bloody hard the profession is. If they stuck to the 9-5 hours and told you they couldn’t see your cat until the next day because they were fully booked he quite possibly would be dead so those that agree with the cost do so because it means that should any of their pets need it they can access 24hr care.

That does seem quite expensive but I'm not a vet so I don't know what would be involved in such a procedure.

I recently paid just over £1600 for my dog to have a cancerous tumour removed. It was quite a big operation and she had to have 2 lots of bloods and X rays too. I also chose to send the tumor for biopsy and after her operation she needed pain medication.

I hope your cat gets well soon, it's really upsetting when they're poorly 💐

glad your cats ok

You will probably find now that anything in the future to do with your cats stomach, bladder indigestion -and anything related will not be covered under insurance as it will be classed as pre existing condition .

if an insurance company can link any new illness your cat gets to the previous illness you won’t be covered .
Even if your cat got cancer they will try and link it to the previous condition

you will be covered for other illness but anything related to stomach problems and it’s unlikely to be covered

many pets - used to be BBM and I think K 9 insurance will cover pre existing conditions
but your pet needs to be clear of the condition for a certain period of time and it’s limited in the first year to £500 then rising to £1000 in the second year then I think fully covered in year three if no issues

I think maybe because some vets close at 4.30 pm ish (ie most nurses/staff start going home and the evening team stay on to support the evening consultations but no surgery or procedures will take place in the evenings if it can be avoided). We would clean/sterilise & close down all the operating theatres and other rooms ready for the morning. A team of vets would then consult til 6.30pm etc and only emergencies from the appointments would have x-rays or scans etc - if it wasn't really urgent they'd squeeze them in the next day instead. Only real emergencies would have operations in the evenings. Also,even though your appointment was at 2pm, the ops list would have been fully booked weeks in advance so your cat would have to be added on once routine/other procedures were all finished- so probably your cat's procedure ran into the evening shift, ie out-of-hours care, ie would cost a lot more. (I rang my vet to try & get my aggressive rat neutered last October & they said the earliest they could book him in was the following January 🤣) so I didn't bother. My local vets (where I used to work) told me they have doubled their clients during Covid but have lost staff and are short of vets. However, it does sound like your vet was taking the piss rather with how much a bandage would cost etc or how much to admit to the hospital ward. If the vet chain was Medivet then I had heard they often overcharge...

I think this may be a contributing factor. The chain vets are likely to have fairly rigid pricing structures. We’ve used an independent for years and sometimes if it’s a 5 min pop back to check progress they don’t charge even though they usually would.

generally cat insurance is really cheap especially for a young cat.

not like my french bulldogs insurance that cost more to insure than my brand new x2 😂😂

I'm with Petplan. My cat is 14 months and had lots of issues and multiple ops. My insurance paid out fully minus 85 excess and when the premium renewed it was only £1 more then the previous year.

All due respect but £102 for consultation fee is really good. My Emergency Vet fee was £275 along then £75 for injection. Again got all this back except excess

Think it's really silly not to have insurance. Plus if they said to me my cat was going to die there's no way I'd be haggling over the price. I'd have gone into debt if need be or sold one of my own kidneys.

1. Insure your pet when you get a pet

1. Realize that the £102 to “ask a few questions & fell his tummy” took years of training and education.

Could YOU do it?
(Wait, no. That takes training and an education costing 70,000£) 🙄🙄🙄

Rubbish. I have insurance and they paid out when my car had a lump that needed operating on. No questions asked, and I didn't need to pay a penny, the vet dealt with the insurance company directly.

I would absolutely advise insurance, it especially is a god send for emergencies like this. I have 5 dogs and 3 cats and my insurance have always paid out.

I am so fortunate - I have the most wonderful, caring vets, who don't dig the arm in! I've at times said, "are you sure?!" when told the cost of treatment. I had a very elderly boy who we sadly lost in January, and they never ever refused to see him the same day I called them! I'm sure they enabled us to have him with us until he was around 20 (he'd been a stray for years before he found us) for longer than we otherwise would have had. He always totally lost the plot at the vet's, even in his old age!

However, the vet that I had for my previous cats was always expensive - I expected that, because it was a veterinary hospital with staff there to mind the animals overnight. I had PetPlan cover and I wanted the Roll's Royce of treatment for my babies. I had to cancel it as they got old, because the premium and the excess were ridiculous. One of my tortie and white girls never needed the cover; the other did once when she was 8, and ran up a bill of over £600 (nearly 25 years ago!) for a kidney infection that wasn't diagnosed for weeks!

Still, I stuck with this practice. When my Maggie girl was 17, she lost a lot of weight and wasn't eating as well as usual. The vet said she had a tumour in her stomach that they thought was bleeding so the prognosis was poor. She spent 2 days at the vet's on a drip. We'd decided to bring her home for a couple of days before we said our final goodbye.

It was a Thursday morning when I went to collect her. When I walked in the receptionist said, "I'm so sorry, it was so sudden!" and I said, "what do you mean?" She disappeared for a couple of minutes and came back to say that Maggie had died shortly after 12am. They never let me know! - I went there expecting to bring my girl home. The last I saw of her was when they took her away in her cat carrier! I was devastated; I will never forget it.

Then they had the cheek to bill me for procedures I'd expressly asked them not to do, because they were never going to change the outcome!

Way back then, when fewer people would have had pet insurance, their eyes would practically light up when you said you had it - and they hiked the prices accordingly!

I'm so glad to have found a caring vet this time around that isn't just in it for the money!

Cheaper to get a new cat.

I recommend Many Pets insurance, they pay up for everything, and once you complete a 2-minute form online they contact the vet to follow it up so you don’t have to think about it again. I once submitted a claim at 11pm on a Sunday night and the money was in my bank account first thing Monday! They also include free video vet calls where a vet will look at your pet via video call at 10 mins notice and tell you if you need to take them to a vet immediately, soon or not at all.

Thanks to all replies, I've now got pet insurance going forward and my cat is on the mend. It really was a shock considering he was fine and then told it was serious, on top of that, the price for not having insurance in place.

To be clear you’re not paying for the “two minute” check. You’re paying for the two minute check and the very many years of training and practice that ensured the vet had the requisite knowledge to make a diagnosis to save the life of your cat.

As with any professional it’s not the time to take the photo, cut the hair, spent on tutoring, standing up in court or writing a legal letter - one also has to pay for the hours/years of training that enables those people to do what they do in the timeframes they do.

And yes, unfortunately dentists, doctors and vets are notoriously over represented in suicide rates and a great deal is, I’m sure, to do with many others not appreciating their expertise and training and assuming they’re rip-off merchants.

Ds1 is a fifth year vetmed student. Taking into account his approx £10,000 a year tuition fee loan and his £12,500 living cost loan, he is starting out with around £116,000 debt to repay to enable him to treat your pets.
You aren't paying for a 15 minute slot, you are paying for the blood, sweat, tears and financial cost of the 5 years of training.

Vets also have staff costs, nurses, receptionists, technicians to run the tests. For out of hours they are on call, so having to stay prepared for a call out after a full day and often before the following day. They miss out on events due to being prepared to drop everything at a moments notice.

When you have a sick animal,the vet will talk to you initially about gold standard care, being able to give your pet the best treatment. They will then adjust the care plan to meet your budget knowing that everything they remove is lowering your pets chances of a good recovery. When you have a sick animal and tell a vet you are insured you can see the relief that they can give your pet the best chance.

Yabvu to say that the vet is overcharging for their time and expertise and even more so to suggest that it's their fault you had no insurance and so we're unable to afford the best possible care. That decision/oversight was on you.

It's good that you have insurance now for future issues.

Yes I love many pets! Have had payouts as quick as this too. Claimed last week and they paid within 2 hours on a weekday!

You said you would go somewhere else, cheaper. They likely didn’t believe you and didn’t want the cat to suffer.

Life saving treatment is a hardly a tiny procedure, and there is a lot more to testing animals than humans, they can’t speak and often hide discomfort and pain very well. Let’s hope there is nothing else wrong with your cat that these tests would’ve picked up.

And as for keeping him longer, they couldn’t possibly predict how he would be after his op, they are the professionals here, not you.

So yes, you are being very unreasonable, but you won’t be told, even by people with experience working in vets with knowledge of theirs costs it seems.