Fees

The NHS has it's good points, but I think it's at fault for the misconception that "Vets are expensive."

There are indeed some expensive vets, and the growth in the corporate chains, might be taken as evidence that there's money to be made from Veterinary Practice, but there are still a lot of practices who's bottom line isn't purely profit. My practice is one of the latter. After 5 years as an independent, I'm still waiting to see some return on the money I've borrowed to set up my business.

Fortunately, I'm not just doing it for the money, and whilst the hours on duty aren't really compensated financially, it's uplifting to see the fruits of our labours. Measured in terms of Thankyou cards versus complaint letters, our practice is very successful.

I wouldn't have any problem listing my complete fees for drugs and services on this website. It would however take up a lot of space, and would need constantly updating. (- it's taken me about 18 months to sort out a website, I don't think I'd have time to do the maintenance.)

Whilst I wouldn't want the practice to have a reputation for being "cheap", a lot of clients, who've come from other practices, think we offer very good value. It would be easy to phone round and make sure you've got the lowest price on the common procedures, ie vaccinations, neutering. I mind my own business, and if other practices want to undercut me on headline prices, that's fine by me.

Just this week a lady came in to buy medication for her dog. She used to take her dog to a "Cheap" vaccination clinic. She'd changed to us because we'd go out to her in an emergency, and was pleasantly suprised that although we were using a more expensive version of the medication that her dog was on, we were actually charging less for it.

Comparisons

I've just done some research on the web to see what Medical practices charge for vaccinations. We're not allowed to vaccinate people, but if we were there'd be a saving to be made

I found Flu jabs at £35-50. Our price for a healthcheck and flu and enteritis booster vaccination for a cat is £23 inc VAT.

It's a similar story with rabies. Rabies vaccination, administered by a nurse, in an NHS subsidised clinic comes in at 2-3 time the price of what we charge, for a healthcheck by a vet, and vaccination.

This one's more contentious, but I visited a client in Sutton Coldfield whose Yorkshire Terrier had nasty teeth, and advised that he would probably need a dental and around 10 extractions. She went pale, and asked how much it would cost. Her colour was restored when I said around £100. Her husband had recently been charged £300 by a private dentist to have only 3 teeth removed!

Payment

We're open with our fees, and will discuss likely costs in advance, and where available cheaper alternatives, but we do insist on payment at the time of treatment. Unfortunately we've had too many broken promises.

We take cash, cheque and most common payment cards.

Insurance

At present we don't charge for filling in insurance forms, despite the extra work it creates. We like the client to pay for treatment direct though and then reclaim the money from the insurance company.

If your insurance is with E&L and they want us to waste our time sending lots of additional information in triplicate, because they've had a fire at their office (again), then we reserve the right to charge for this.