How much is your vet's consultation fee?

CinnamonChristmasCookie

CinnamonChristmasCookie

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Mine is £30 and I'm feeling slightly miffed at being charged over £80 for a diagnosis of 'I don't know, have some antibiotics'. It might be the suture material from his neutering op weeks and weeks ago. :confused: It's a lump near the site of the intradermal stitches, about the size of a malteser.

I'm kind of pondering why, if it's the suture material, am I paying for issues arising....:confused:
 
Who should foot the bill then? It's not the vets fault if your pets having a suture reaction just one of those things. It's a risk/complication that unfortunately you have to cover the cost of. Although I will say that we don't charge consult fees for post op checks. Its unfortunate for you I know. Our consult fee is 29.50. Xx
 
My vets are about £31 but as I'm in there so often they only charge the fee for a new thing, if it's part of an ongoing problem they waive the fee. Sometimes they don't charge me at out of pity :D
 
£22 for an initial consult, £19 if its a follow up consult. First post-op check is free, depending on the circumstances will sometimes do a second free POC if its just to make sure wound is healing ok following an issue.

Unfortunately reactions to suture materials do happen, it is just one of those things - you are leaving a foreign material in an animals body, some animals will have a reaction. If it is a reaction then hopefully it should settle once the suture dissolves.
 
What do you want them to do? Make something up to make you feel like your getting your moneys worth?
Internal suture material takes a while to dissolve depending on what is used, so could be that, if it's working its way out it will cause an infection and ab will sort it out.
 
cinnamontoast said:
.......

I mean to walk through the door for any reason, not for an operation.
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I took an unwell puppy to my vet on Monday, and the consultation was £20.10 including VAT, so by the time that I claim the tax back (work dog and I'm registered ;)), the actual cost was £16.75, which I didn't think was too bad.

The puppy had an injection of Synulox @ £4.25 and 20 Synulox tabs @ £11.25, so yes, I think that your £80 is a bit steep, considering that the castration work which presumably they had done, was a contributing factor, and though they can hardly be responsible for that, a more generous approach wouldn't have hurt.

There does seem to be a considerable disparity between different Practices, and their charges, and more than once I've had vets ask me the costs which Practices in opposition are charging! There may well be times when they work out what they need to charge, and then think about what they can get away with! :D

Alec.
 
Alec Swan said:
I took an unwell puppy to my vet on Monday, I think that your £80 is a bit steep, considering that the castration work which presumably they had done, was a contributing factor, and though they can hardly be responsible for that, a more generous approach wouldn't have hurt.
Alec.
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The Synolux tablets are nearly £1.50 each, I worked out. 2 weeks' worth. I've been with this vet for over ten years: is it wrong to expect leeway? Probably. I got absolute killer looks for asking for a prescription previously so I could buy the meds online, but it saved me over £70. Bad me.

Toffee44 said:
If anyone interested Teals paw still not healed fully but its healing nicely now without the staples in.
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Did he have staples put in? Was it not healing on its own?

FirstTimeFoaler said:
£12.50 on a zone day or £25 for the rest of the week.
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What's a zone day?
 
Our vets have zone days for horse visits, basically they cover your area on a certain day each week and you book in advance and get a reduced rate or free visit. Never heard of it for dogs as I usually take mine in to the surgery unless its a whelping or similar.
Glad to hear Teal is on the mend, did you use Manuka honey?
 
I am not sure what our vet charges but can someone tell me if when you take a dog for its annual booster you are charged a consultation fee on top of the cost of the injection. The reason I ask is because it cost me £40 recently for a booster and a friend of mine who uses a different vet took her dog the same day and paid £15!
 
cinnamontoast said:
Yes to Crugeran's question.
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Thanks, doesn't really explain why I paid more than double for my dog's injection especially as I have used the same vet for 30 years and my friend had only just had her dog and had used her vet twice! I am seriously thinking of changing practice which, as you can imagine is not going to be easy as I really trust him after all this time and he knows all my animals but the difference in charges is crazy. I have had quotes from other vets for horse injections and call out fees and most of the time they are almost half the cost of mine and are always less. :mad:
 
Is your practice located in a more expensive area or very small? Mine is two guys, tiny practice but employs a nurse, receptionist, has a house sized practice in an expensive area. It is probably all relative. You'd lose nothing by phoning elsewhere and asking for routine prices for jabs, consultations etc.

We worked out that my vet earns £180 an hour when busy, 10 minute consultations! Thing is, I'll pay cos I want my dogs looked after. Wonder what a soldier in Afghanistan gets per hour? *Dons tin hat*
 
A lot depends on what services the practice offers. A lot of the franchise type vets who are in pet supermarkets etc offer very cheap vaccines but don't do more complicated surgery etc. You are not paying vets just for their time, you are paying for all the expensive equipment they have. Your vets £180 an hour also has to pay his staff I presume ct. Does he do his own out of hours or is it shared with another practice , all this has to be paid for.
I am lucky that our vets are by no means the most expensive in the area, but even if they were I would stay with them because they have excellent up to date facilities and equipment, and most importantly I trust them and we have a good relationship. There has been a couple of mobile equine practices started up round here recently, who don't charge visit fees. I know of a few people who changed to them, but if anything serious occured with their horses they had to be referred to the practice they had left because the mobile vets didn't have the treatment facilities.
 
I suppose that makes sense if yours is only a 2 vet practice but I would hate that. It does seem that more and more practices are doing this, particularly small animal ones, they'll have vets doing a 9 - 5 day soon.:rolleyes:
 
My vets is guite a big one with two seperate surgeries and there are at least 4 vets in each one. There are numerous nurses and receptionists. I have no objection to paying a little more as I do trust him and he is wonderful with my horses but the charges are starting to get out of hand at double what I would pay somewhere else. I am very reluctant to change as trust is a very big thing for me but many friends of mine have moved to another local vet and they are all very pleased with the service they get.
 
I don't know how much our vets charge but they are riduculously cheap.

Due to the isolation and vastness of the area they cover they do home visits in certain areas on certain days. We had them visit us and prescribe us Metacam for our old girl, whole visit including Metacam cost £18.

When the old girl was put to sleep we took her to the surgery. Cost us £24 to have a 42kg Ridgeback down, although that was just for the drugs as we brought her home with us.

Elsie has been twice, with an eye infection and an ear infection, think the cost of those visits, including the medications, was between £20 and £30.
 
My vet is very reasonable
A home visit to pts my elderly sick dog (45 kilo) was total cost including drugs and home visit fee £48 the vet is 12 miles away.
Routine jabs dog £25 cat £22
One of my dogs needs jabs every 6 weeks 1 jab am and 1 jab pm for 2 days running .They charge the drugs plus £3.50 for doing each jab. so £14 for the 4 jabs plus the cost of the drugs £70 drug covers 8 jabs so total of £49 for each 2 day batch.
Call out to visit the horses is £16.

Not bad!
 
Not bad at all! The equine vet call out is £35, I think. I once queried a bill and got a bit of a mouthful down the phone. Given my horse had just been PTS, I was unhappy!

The bill said £50 for helping to load the horse, who had broken his olecronon. The boy nearly fell on me and the YO as he went flat on the ramp. The vet gave him a minor shove on the bum to help before he fell and said he needed to put 'something' on the bill. Hmm.
 
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