JANUARY 2023

Clients of Carolina Animal Hospital,

Welcome to 2023 - If the following message seems a familiar read it's because not a lot has changed in terms of access to care at the Emergency and Specialty Referral level of Veterinary Care.

We wish to keep you updated with regard to ongoing patient care issues being experienced by pet owners in the entire Triangle Region.

Emergency Services Facilities are experiencing staffing issues and increased patient numbers with wait times often exceeding 6+ hours for “Non-Emergency” issues – or some cases are turned away and told to see their veterinarian the next day. Office Visit  Exam fees for ER services are in the $ 155 – 200 range - for initial examination only. In addition, Emergency Facilities are suspending services for a shift or multiple shifts. Unfortunately, our office often receives little to no advanced notification – thus keeping up with our after-hours emergency recommendations has become increasingly difficult.

We have also experienced a substantial increase in both established and new client visit requests while hiring more qualified staff to expand has proven challenging. To address this surge, we’ve integrated FLEX URGENT CARE SLOTS into our daily schedule. These slots are additional to our time specific scheduled wellness / preventative care and Illness/Injury appointments. These FLEX SLOTS can only be utilized after all other available time specific appointment slots have been filled.

There are four FLEX URGENT CARE SLOTS per day, two morning / afternoon blocks, which are flexibly timed. Our staff will request you come in and we will start an initial history / triage, and fit your pet in based on urgency and existing case load. We advise you call early, as once these slots are filled we don’t have excess capacity and will have to refer you to Emergency Services -- which you do not want to have happen.

Let us reiterate –THESE FLEX URGENT CARE SLOTS ARE FOR OUR ESTABLISHED CLIENTS/PATIENTS ONLY, and are only opened up on that particular day. These slots are at an increased fee premium to offset additional support staff costs, and frankly to discourage less than urgent cases from utilizing them.

 * There is one new update for 2023:

Registered Veterinary Technician Appointments are likely to kick off sometime in March/April.

Sometime during the spring of this year we are hoping to kick off a new option in providing access to routine preventative care services (vaccines, heartworm testing, intestinal parasite screening and access to prescriptions for Heartworm, flea and tick products) as well minor problem visits for our ESTABLISHED PATIENTS with greater availability/convenience  and a lower price point than our traditional Veterinarian Doctor based appointments. With the creation of Registered Veterinary Technician based appointments, we are aiming to reduce wait times for access to regular preventative services as well as open up more doctor availability for those truly ill or injured patients which do need hands on doctor appointments. In addition, our price point for our RVT based appointment will be substantially lower than our Doctor Based Appointment fee. Stay tuned for updates on this new option as it becomes available,

-- Drs. Amber and Colin McHugh