Emergency Care

• What is the best way to get in touch with a doctor when I have an emergency?
• When do I have to pay an emergency fee?
• Why was I charged an emergency fee when I called during the daytime?
• If I have an emergency at night or on the weekend how long will it take for a response?

Q:   What is the best way to get in touch with a doctor when I have an emergency?

A:   You can always reach us by dialing our main lines 24 hours a day.  We have an auto-attendant that will allow you to select from the menu to leave an emergency message, resulting in a page to the doctors on call.  Make sure you leave your name, what the emergency is, as well as all phone numbers that you can be reached at.  If you have anonymous call rejection, then you must inactivate it in order for us to be able to call you back.  If possible, have someone stay by the phone so that we contact you to get any other pertinent information, such as directions.

Q:   When do I have to pay an emergency fee?

A:   Emergencies, just as the word indicates, require immediate attention.  Daytime emergencies usually require either rescheduling another client's appointment, or extending the doctor's work day, or both.  If any of these situations occur, we charge an emergency fee.  Occasionally, one of our doctors can fit an emergency into their schedule without a substantial rearrangement of their day; in these cases we charge a nominal unscheduled visit fee.  Both after hours and weekend calls are considered to be emergency calls and require the doctor to attend to your horse on a drop-all basis, and thus are subject to emergency fees as well.

Q:   Why was I charged an emergency fee when I called during the daytime?

A:   Unlike small animal or human medicine doctors, equine ambulatory clinicians spend their day traveling from farm to farm seeing patients.  Efficient scheduling of the doctors travel and appointment time is a challenge, even on a day when things are running smoothly.  When an emergency call comes in during the day, one of the doctors must respond to that emergency.  The response to that call means that the other scheduled clients for the day must be contacted and pushed to a later time in the day or another day, and that the doctor in all likelihood will be working late that evening to catch up on their scheduled calls.  In addition the call may be in a totally different direction and area from that of the doctors scheduled calls and therefore may require significant time out of the doctor's day for travel.  It is not unusual for an emergency call to occupy 2 or more hours from the day when travel time is accounted for.  In any case, it creates extended hours for the doctor as well as additional work for the support staff and an inconvenience for other clients.  In fact many of the daytime emergencies are harder to respond to than the after hours emergencies.  The amount of rearranging and shuffling of resources can be quite exhausting.

Q:   If I have an emergency at night or on the weekend how long will it take for a response?

A:   Equine Medical Service has what we feel is the most constantly reliable emergency response system in the area.  Our doctors are available 24 hours per day 365 days every year.  When an after hours emergency call comes in, our on-call doctor is paged.  Although the doctor on call is dedicated to remaining free and available, at the moment that the pager goes off the doctor on call may be anywhere: eating dinner, asleep, in a shower, or in the middle of responding to another emergency.  Our system is designed to allow the doctor 5-7 minutes to retrieve the emergency message, once that time has elapsed and the doctor has not been able to respond, the system sends out another page.  In addition to having the recall system on our pager we also have a backup system for emergency coverage, so if the primary on call doctor cannot respond to the call, the backup clinician is called into action.  The great majority, > 80%, of our emergency messages are retrieved within 2-3 minutes, allowing for the lag time to retrieve the message and return your call still translates into only 5-7 minutes until the doctor is on the phone with you.  There are certain situations that can or will delay the response.  Some reasons include: a message that is hard or impossible to hear (please speak slowly and clearly in a loud voice); a cell phone number that is not in reception range (please use a wire line if possible); anonymous call rejection on the phone you are using (all of the doctors phones have blocked numbers.  For the doctor to call you back, you must call from an open line with no restriction.  If you are calling from a line with rejection, you can temporarily remove this by picking up the receiver, entering *87, and then hanging up); an information only call (if the information is not critical to your animals health, please do not use this system), but should you need to, the doctor will respond as soon as he is available.  If they are in the middle of treating a patient, you may wait for an extended period.  Remember we strive to provide excellence in emergency coverage for our clients, therefore we must prioritize our regular clients emergencies over those of non-clients.  Should you ever have an emergency and not be satisfied with the response of our service, please call and let us know.