Cost Explanations, Payment Policy and Insurance Opportunities
Our focus at Foothills Veterinary Hospital is the best medicine and care for our patients and the best service to our clients. As with human medicine, the opportunities and advancements in both medical knowledge and technology have come a long way. They have contributed to happier, healthier pets and longer life spans. Those great life-saving advancements come at a price though. While human medical costs (equipment, drugs, clinic expenses, overhead and staff support) are usually supported by a community or corporate owned facility, veterinarians themselves are usually the sole financial support of the technology they buy, the education they follow, the clinic overhead and staff they support.
Some years ago, a veterinarian’s medical arsenal consisted of some vaccines, a few sedative products, some antibiotics, bandage material, etc. As the profession progressed, many clinics continued to practice as they always had, not taking advantage of and purchasing the advancements in veterinary medicine. No matter what the reason they chose to do this, these veterinary clinics were able to continue to charge the lower fees for their services as their overhead did not reflect investment in the diagnostic technology available.
Today’s progressive veterinary hospital has often made a tremendous investment in equipment and education to be able to correctly treat your animal. That equipment can include in house laboratory facilities, digital radiography, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT scans) and MRI, to cite a few examples. Technology AND advanced education in the use of these medical opportunities, can greatly enhance the doctor’s diagnostic abilities and therefore correct treatment.
As an example, a dog with an acutely painful abdomen is able to have lab work done within minutes (instead of days or just guessing), enabling the doctor to start assembling the clues he/she needs to diagnose the animal’s condition. A radiology work up can done within minutes, adding to the “clues”. The radiographs can be sent out to specialists around the world for further evaluation if needed.
All information adds up to the appropriate treatment and pain relief for the dog.
To summarize; the veterinarian must be willing to invest considerable time and money to stay abreast of the advances in medicine, science and research to provide the best possible care for your horse or your pet.
Foothills Veterinary Hospital cares about helping the horses and the pets brought to us. To that end, we make every effort to have the diagnostics available with the newest in equipment, medication and education to do the best job possible. We enjoy the veterinary profession and care deeply about all the animals that are entrusted to us. We endeavor to charge our clients appropriately for our services while keeping in mind that our hospital is a business that has overhead to support and our employees need to be compensated for their contribution to the pet’s care and successful treatment also.
If you have any questions, feel free to discuss them with the office manager. We appreciate your understanding.
OUR PAYMENT POLICY
We make every effort to charge reasonable and fair prices for our services and products and to apply those charges to your account accurately. If you feel that there has been a billing mistake, contact our office and we’ll get it corrected.
Payment is due in full at the time of treatment or when released from the hospital. We accept cash, pre-approved checks, debit cards, Visa, Mastercard, and Money Orders.
We also offer a third party payment plan called CareCredit. (subject to credit approval) There is no fee to apply. Go to www.carecredit.com for more information. Do this before you come into the clinic if possible.
If funds are a concern, please do not hesitate to speak with us BEFORE problems occur. We will do our best to provide you with treatment options that will work within your budget.
PET INSURANCE
Another option for paying for your pet’s health care is to look into enrolling in a pet insurance plan BEFORE your appointment. If there is a diagnoses that a pet insurance will cover and a veterinary clinic diagnoses this BEFORE you are insured, that is considered a pre-existing condition when you apply and therefore would not be covered. The listed insurances apply to dogs and cats only. There are other insurance policies for horses. Contact us and we can help you with that also.
** Our clinic derives no monetary gain from any of the pet insurance policies.
The following are just some of the pet insurances available.
• TruPanion – www.trupanion.com; (877) 589-1863
• VPI – www.petinsurance.com; (888) 899-4VPI
• ASPCA – ASPCApetinsurance.com; (888) 716-1203