Today I have left my vets.

Our surgery recently taken over by CVs is in a small terraced house ! Very basic facilities, but the original vet was wonderful, even though it could take you 45 mins to get away from the consultation as he was so thorough. They are charging £18 for a prescription now, I think that is far too much. Seriously considering changing vets now.
 
I would equate a vets fees to dentist, not a plumber. Unless your plumber has,
Runs a building that has set opening hours,
Diagnostic equipment,
Cares for inpatients with supporting staff,
Holds drugs in stock that may never be used but they have to ready to used that have a limited shelf life.
Out of hours service- have you tried getting a plumber, we are still waiting and its four weeks, we have no heating.
Its also a lot harder to train as a vet than a plumber, its harder to get into vet school than become a doctor.

I think they see medication fees as a bit of jam on top, how many people shop around? The older client may not, when really if they added on just a bit everyone would not bother.
My mare was on daily Regumate, even with the script fee from the vet it was nearly a £100 cheaper on line, delivered to my door. The vets only stocked the small bottles and I would have to drive 17miles each way to collect. They could have ordered it, had it delivered to me, charged me £20 more than the online price, everyone wins.
I will happily pay the extra to have my Tom cat wormed, my vet has fingers of steel and rams it down his throat, where as with my feeble attempts he spits it out and lacerates my fingers. Worth at least £20.
 
If we all bought our animal's meds online how would vets make up the shortfall? By charging us more for prescriptions, visits, treatment etc.?

Genuine economic question.
 
I'm all for defending vets in many ways because they do have huge overheads and do years of training and for that I have the utmost respect

However... I do believe that its fully understood that a pet will pull at the heartstrings of the owner and they would go a long way to helping their pet

I use three vets, one for livestock, one for dogs/cats and one for the ponies, the livestock bills are nowhere near what the equine ones are and if I take a chicken to the livestock vets I will walk away after parting with a maximum of £15. If a dog or cat goes to a vet I am looking at £40 for even walking through the door

I also think that insurance has a lot to answer for!
 
Nicnac said:
If we all bought our animal's meds online how would vets make up the shortfall? By charging us more for prescriptions, visits, treatment etc.?

Genuine economic question.
Click to expand...

That is my assumption and I think it would be a more accurate way of knowing how much their time was worth
 
Writing a prescription, on headed notepaper, with literally the amount of tablets required, does not take long. 40 seconds? And I'm charged £10?

Sometimes-and I emphasise the sometimes-I think vet charges are difficult to justify. I'm not knocking them, I pay up and I run to them if I'm worried about my animals, but they should definitely be offering to write prescriptions when it means a massive saving for clients. This is one area where I think they really could say 'Hey, I'm going to write you a prescription, it'll be £50 less'. They'd have to order the drugs in anyway, as they did for me recently as they don't normally carry it and I wanted to use a particular drug over another.
 
I have no problem paying a realistic price for a vet or any other professional's time and facilities. I do dislike the meds cost subsidising the consultation fee for a few reasons though - when I had elderly animals with all the usual age related ailments, on long term meds I was paying through the nose for those while other people were getting cheap vaccinations and visit fees. I suspect that was the business model to get them in the door and sell them food, wormers etc also with a large markup. Like most people I want to be charged for the service I receive...it backfired badly on my previous vets, a small practice when prescriptions were first publicised (quite a few years ago, maybe 10 - 15?) and they had to provide them FOC for a limited time. It was an eye opener to see the difference in prices online even for stuff that was non prescription.The vet practice was bitterly resentful of the loss of income but for one cat alone I was saving £60 a month on throid tablets, Metacam was £20 a big bottle instead of £60 and Stronghold/ Advocate was literally a third of the price too. With 3 cats and 3 dogs at the time I couldn't afford not to switch to online and even with prescription charges I still saved a lot.

I ended up leaving that practice because they got so petty about prescriptions ie if I bought from them I could have 6 or 12 months supply of Advocate at a time but they would only write a script for 3 months, they tried telling me that the cat had to have monthly blood tests if I wanted a script but 6 monthly tests if I got the meds from them and so on. Ok, they needed to generate income but by underpricing their visit fees so much they would had to double them to a realistic price. That's a bad business model IMO as it leaves them vulnerable in these situations as customers who feel gouged move on. Their attitude cost them 8 clients - and I know I wasn't the only person who left them over this - if you count my small animals plus 2 horses. That's all their jabs, wormers, visit fees, flea treatment and the rest that they could have kept if they had balanced their charges more fairly.

It's a shame in some ways but while I truly believe that most vets are in their profession for all the best reasons, if they want to run a practice they do have to remember that it's a business. Like most people I don't stint on my animals care but at the same time do want value for money and if a med can be bought elsewhere for a fraction of the price, well that's what I'll do.

I now use a chain vet which I'd prefer not to in an ideal world because although I would like to see the same vet all the time and build a relationship with them ( most of the chains seem to go through a lot of staff IME) they do their own out of hours locally, they have better equipment, opening times and facilities and are more open to referring an animal at my request. At my old vets their OOHs was with Medivet miles away, they took a request for referral as an insult to their abilities and at the time, their equipment was getting very out of date and at one point with only 2 vets appointments were scarce. The vets were great but 9 -5 surgeries just don't work in most service industries I'm afraid...
 
So how many would be willing to pay a hundred pound consult for one small problem eg sore eye? Who is going to be there at midnight your vet or the online pharmacy?
Yes, if you can find it cheaper great- but I don't complain that my local car garage doesnt tell me I can buy my oil for half the price down the road so not sure why anyone would feel vets should or must actively undersell their own practice charging protocol.
I'd rahter pay my local vets the charge for a consult and then pay what my animal needs medication wise rather than paying three or four times that so other peoples animals can have medication at cost price.

I can see why people go online - the cost difference is vast but I don't complain about the fact that the vets is a business and different business models have different overheads/costsetc.
 
SusieT said:
So how many would be willing to pay a hundred pound consult for one small problem eg sore eye? Who is going to be there at midnight your vet or the online pharmacy?
Yes, if you can find it cheaper great- but I don't complain that my local car garage doesnt tell me I can buy my oil for half the price down the road so not sure why anyone would feel vets should or must actively undersell their own practice charging protocol.
I'd rahter pay my local vets the charge for a consult and then pay what my animal needs medication wise rather than paying three or four times that so other peoples animals can have medication at cost price.

I can see why people go online - the cost difference is vast but I don't complain about the fact that the vets is a business and different business models have different overheads/costsetc.
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But my issue was that my small vets weren't there at midnight - they had outsourced their OOH care. I can understand why, it's not viable for a small practice to have their limited vets on call 24/7 but it also meant that animals that had to stay overnight for any reason had to be picked up by their owners, transported 30 miles and the reverse in the morning. Not what you want for a sick animal. They didn't hold a lot of drugs in stock, again I understand why but it meant an extra trip back to the vets to collect them when you could click online, have them delivered the next day for half to the third of the price. It's not just the cost, like most people I'm short on time too.

My mechanic charges per hour for work and will often tell me that it would be cheaper to get parts etc myself but sometimes lack of time or inclination means that I accept that I'll be charged for his time one way or another if he sources them. That's fine with me as is a vets charging a tenner for a script. What would annoy me is paying £42 for a consultation already covering diagnosis and meds check if I bought from them but by buying online I'm charged another £18 for a prescription. That smacks of recovering lost profit not covering the vets time to check an aminals history.

Opposite to you I would prefer a vets to charge a realistic price for a consultation and a reasonable price for meds - I accept that they can't price match online due to volumes etc - rather than having to subsidise the lucky people who only have to go to the vets once or twice a year.
 
If that were the cost of a consult I would rather pay that as cost of consult than inflated price of drugs.

and yes a lot of small animal vets outsource OOH now, so aren't there are midnight if you needed them anyway.
 
Reading this I think how very lucky with my vets. They have 3 practices and four partners. They offer 24 hour care if needed. Perhpas when I think some of you are harsh about paying the bills I am not appreciating how good mine are.
I prefer mixed (large and small animal)vets as they are, IMO, more realistic about treatments. Small animal vets do seem to be 'keep it going at all costs', bith financially and medically.
 
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