Vet bill £151 for a wee cat !!

Montymoo_2

Fairy wishes, i completely sympathise! My partner is also a vet

V_Chic_Chick

I have a chicken, who was rather poorly a couple of months ago. We ended up taking her to the vet (I can treat a lot of things but I was really out of my depth). For £65 we got a consultation, Matilda knocked out and the vet having his finger up her nether regions, a few hours in a recovery cage and 14 ml (1 weeks supply) of antibiotics. Then the vet said she probably had 'weeks not months' to live. So, we decided to take him up on the offer of antibiotics (not euthanasia).

Even though Matilda only cost us £10 in the first place, it was worth it, as she is still with us 6 or 8 weeks on

mikey-mike_2

fairywishes wrote:

Your dot on....the hours are crippling us we worked out for the hours he does he gets payed 72p an hour its just plain stupid. He is 14 years qualified and on a wage of £40,000.....

????......if he works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year then 40k works out at £4.50 an hour

I often think our vet is not very good at sums when i see some of his bills

purple-smartie

Is there any insurers that do other animals apart from cats and dogs? And do they only insure pets seperatley or can you pay a higher premium and insure all of them for a cheaper cost of insuring them all seperatly. Thanks.

ka7e

Tuesday, took a poorly-looking cat to my vets - Merlin (the cat) was showing his inner eyelid, which usually indicates that a cat is ill. Vet took his temp., felt his tummy, listened to his heart and said it was probably a virus (no infection) and no treatment necessary. Whole thing took literally 2 mins.
At the front reception desk, the nurse couldn't find any charge put through to my account, so I left - secretly hoping the kindly vet wasn't going to charge me at all.
This morning I got a bill for the "consultation" for £21.36. Even if the consult took 5 mins it makes the hourly rate a whooping £256.32!

mentaljessie

I agree my Mum's in the animal welfare game and is a vet nurse so knows a good vet on instinct. I nearly keeled over when my BF phoned me at work to say the local cat expert vet had quoted £350 for a dental operation on Rocky (my little b/w tom in the avatar). It was quite a complex op but I talked it over with Mum, and spoke to a vet colleague of hers, cost price (done in their lunch break) was £80. So you can see the profit to be made.

Fleago

ka7e wrote:

Tuesday, took a poorly-looking cat to my vets - Merlin (the cat) was showing his inner eyelid, which usually indicates that a cat is ill. Vet took his temp., felt his tummy, listened to his heart and said it was probably a virus (no infection) and no treatment necessary. Whole thing took literally 2 mins.
At the front reception desk, the nurse couldn't find any charge put through to my account, so I left - secretly hoping the kindly vet wasn't going to charge me at all.
This morning I got a bill for the "consultation" for £21.36. Even if the consult took 5 mins it makes the hourly rate a whooping £256.32!

I'm sorry Merlin was poorly, hope he's feeling better now However, if your vet runs an appointment system, it's likely that more than five minutes is allocated per appointment, making the hourly rate less than the admittedly whopping figure you quoted, so even if your appointment was very short, it doesn't mean they can see more people in the hour.

I don't know, I'm shocked at some of the figures people quote for vet charges, but I always feel as if I have to defend vets in general. This is probably because ours are superb and I view our relationship with them as a partnership - our dogs are the only specimens of their breed that they see, so they listen to us about breed idiosyncracies and take heed of what we say and allow it to inform their advice. They will come out for emergencies out of hours willingly and quickly and, recently, when having one of our pets put to sleep, the vet in attendance was so compassionate, kind and supportive that he made it so much more bearable for me. We never feel rushed during consultations and the fees they charge, whilst modest compared to some, are worth every single penny for the service they provide for us. In fact, I'd willingly pay more than they charge, because the practice is worth its weight in gold.

So if any of you are displeased about the cost and service your practice provides, vote with your feet and shop around, because there are many wonderful vets out there :T

HugoRune_2

beat me to it!

mikey-mike wrote:

????......if he works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year then 40k works out at £4.50 an hour

I often think our vet is not very good at sums when i see some of his bills

peter_the_piper

It gives you some idea what a doctor would have to charge if we didn't have the NHS dosn't it?

blessings3

chipmunk wrote:

That makes me laugh - where do you suppose the vets obtain the drugs they sell to their customers?

My puss collapsed one day and we took her to the vet. They did an x-ray and saw a mass in her chest cavity. She was referred to a veterinary hospital in Derby where they could do a scan and it turned out that there was a large tumour surrounding her heart and compressing her lungs. The prognosis was very poor but they said they could operate and possibly remove the tumour and hopefully she would have about another six months. However, this would obviously be very costly. After much soul-searching we decided that we had to give her a chance and to us, she was worth the cost. The bill, which included her week-long stay in hospital and oxygen at £100/litre (:eek:) came to just over £1,100.00. The staff at the hospital were absolutely fantastic and we can't thank them enough because we still have Suki 3 years on and it was worth every penny !

However, she's on a daily dose of steroids for the rest of her life and until recently I was getting these from my local vet at a cost of £6.95 for 1 month's supply (30 tablets). The last time, I got a scrip from the vet (which they are not allowed to charge for any more) and bought them from BestPet online - I paid £7.49 for 6 month's worth including delivery !!

By my reckoning, that's one hell of a profit the surgery was making !

Online retaling has slightly less overheads than the cost associated with with a surgery and the staff to run it - you need to compare like with like

Sorry if sound pedantic just find this general slanging of vets a bit strange like as ''we love our pets so much'' its crule to charge real world prices for treatment and should be subsidised

Some vets do over charge but its not a closed market and people tend to vote with thier feet - Vets in general to be people with a vocation rather than a percunicery intent but cannt see why they shouldn't make a living like anyone else

And yes I do speak knowing a vet or two and the hours in a country practice can be terrible - All Creature Great and small still isn't that far from the truth!