Cut repair £200 per inch

jimbo123p

Well-Known Member
Busy doing a shed when my wife called me over. She had been out with the dogs playing with a ball. Dodger had ripped a v shaped gash under his bottom lip. It would be about an inch in total but the point was sticking out. It was obvious a stitch was needed. Well with anasetic, pills etc the bill came to £223. The insurance should pick up the bulk but we still have the £80 excess, Jim OUCH
 
The insurance should pick up the bulk

I sometimes wonder whether health insurance, animal and human, has caused the the practitioners of those disciplines to reset their own perception of their market value in accordance with the rates offered by the insurers: thereby making sure that without insurance, no-one can afford private medical/dental, or vet bills.
 
I sometimes wonder whether health insurance, animal and human, has caused the the practitioners of those disciplines to reset their own perception of their market value in accordance with the rates offered by the insurers: thereby making sure that without insurance, no-one can afford private medical/dental, or vet bills.

I would say not. What has happened is it has pushed the advances in Veterinary Medicine very rapidly forwards. What that means is now compared to 20 years ago 'specialist' centres are available within a reasonable commute of most owners. Animals that would have just been put to sleep 20 years ago are now perfectly 'fixable' and even able to go back to work. Some of the complex orthopaedic operations (hip replacements, new stifle joint stabilisations, complex fracture repairs) would not be available to anyone if it wasn't for pet insurance.

What it means is you, as a dog owner, now have a choice. You can have everything possible done for your pet, spend tens of thousands of pounds of your or the insurance companies money or you can have the beastie patched up and put to sleep if you can't afford the specialist care. You have to remember that there is no NHS for pets, every time you see a vet it's private health for pets. Rightly so the standards are being pushed up by client perception, legislation and progress. I wouldn't want my dog having an operation on the consulting table with no oxygen to breath just an IV injection and a kit used on multiple animals. There was a time that may have been acceptable but not now.

When vets ask the question "is he insured" it's not a case of seeing how much money we can possibly spend, it's a case of doing the best for the patient. Sometimes I will run a more comprehensive set of blood tests for an insured dog (no benefit to me financially, we sell lab fees out at cost) and I get all the information at once. In a dog where money is an issue more basic tests can be done and if no answer add more tests later. This causes a delay in reaching a diagnosis. The reason I like insured pets is the fact that we can get on and do the best for the patient rather than constantly worrying about how much will everything cost. Equally with insured pets we can more easily refer them elsewhere for more specialist procedures and get them better faster!

What you have to realise is you can't have a gold standard service on bargain basement prices! If you don't have a bit of money in the bank to pay if your pet becomes ill, then you ought to take out insurance. Owning a pet is a privilege, not a right.
 
Yup.
Pay £223 for a super high-tech veterinarily-advanced suture, or buy some insurance and pay only £80 on top of the premiums.
:)

Not getting into a slanging match, but consider a few things. The cost of the suture itself is almost irrelevant. What you are (potentially) paying for is a number of highly trained individuals to be at your beck and call 24 hours a day 366 days this year. You are paying for the provision of an anaesthetic machine, hundreds of different drugs sat there so that the correct anaesthetic, sedative, painkiller, reversal agent, emergency drugs are available should you need them. I imagine there was someone to answer the phone and greet you, at the heated premises. You are paying for surgical equipment to be there, sterilised and ready to be used. You are paying for the other drains, dressings and implants that may be needed. You are paying for the staff to keep up to date with new techniques (vets have to spend a minimum of 5 full days a year doing extra study). You are then paying for the waste produced from the operation to be disposed of*. You are paying for the recovery kennels and the nurses checking on the dog.

It's costs a hell of a lot of money just to keep the doors open, before we do anything. There's nowt fancy about that suture, but there's a hell of a lot behind the scenes that go into it.

*after a simple operation off the top of my head I will generate at least 5 different types of waste that all have to be disposed of separately - at a cost.
 
Buy some sutures of the Internet and then go to sewing classes, I prefer the running stitch personally
 
Actually after an attempted blatant rip off by a certain pet insurer i am very wary of them.. My Staffordshire walked through something which effected her pads which resulted in repeated trips tot eh vets for treatment. it would subside then flare up again a month of so later. The insurer decided to not only treble the premiums but alter the excess to just enough that the monthly treatment bil came to just below the new excess.

So not only did I get to pay three times as much premium but I also got to pay for all the treatment. When I pointed this out to them they said tough. Basiclly they wanted owners who never use the insurance just pay up all the time... You can guess what my answer was. I still have the letters etc and funnily enough the other week they cold called wanting to know if we wished to take up their special offer cover. I told them NO as I don't trust them and explained why their response was :-

O we wouldn't do that.

A friend had to threaten court action with another pet insurer to get them to pay up. They had had the policy running for years but when they needed to claim the company refused to pay. He now puts money into a savings account each month instead.

The Staffordshire I have now they wouldn't cover as he is 15 and so too old anyway. If they got their acts together and stopped ripping us off i am reconsider but until then no way hose.

Huh I still have the letters and the new policy they sen through telling me they did do it.
 
I alway's take my dog to the vet's i would not try to super glue or stitch anything myself , i had a mate who laughed at paying vets bills he lost one dog to a rats bite ( no yearly jabs ) and let the other one wonder round for weeks after he super glued a wound shut only to end up taking it to vet's in the end !
 
I don't think it would get the site owner into trouble, but bear in mind it is illegal to treat animals yourself! First aid is ok, treatment is not. There's always some clown of a mate who's mouth is too big and lets slip to the wrong person about treatment. I've seen it happen.
 
It was necessary treatment, well done and expensive. I have no doubt the system used justified the costs. my dogs are worth the expense. As for home treatment as a retired casualy sister with thirty years experience my wife could have stitched it but horses for courses as they say. Jim
 
As in the work place you do a basic first aid course as you can do with your local vets ,get in touch ask to help out for free at the weekend and in re-turn then will give you the basics on looking after your dog, example stapleing up your dog, stopping blood flow, stitching up on sensative areas , giving you a list of drugs that we take that your dog can take [ medium to large dogs, i.e pain killers anti bio`s etc]
and the use of creams for aneathesic use
 
In the UK you have to be licensed to treat animals, Many do it of course but won't flag it up on a forum!
 
Just to back Apache up, I'd say insurance has made a huge difference to what can be done for an animal and the more you do, the more it will cost. I've discussed the issue of insurance with students and use an example from my experience. The difference insurance makes is similar to the difference moving between practices in different parts of the country with different client bases (wealthy to not so wealthy). The wealthy ones (insured) want everything doing, the not so wealthy mean I've got to compromise on gold standard care.
As Apache says the changes in anaesthetics and painkillers have made a huge difference and one aspect is that fewer wounds break down so fewer need re-treating.
Apache - 5 bins - impressive and sadly all too correct (spent a whole day on waste last week!)
 
As in the work place you do a basic first aid course as you can do with your local vets ,get in touch ask to help out for free at the weekend and in re-turn then will give you the basics on looking after your dog, example stapleing up your dog, stopping blood flow, stitching up on sensative areas , giving you a list of drugs that we take that your dog can take [ medium to large dogs, i.e pain killers anti bio`s etc]
and the use of creams for aneathesic use

Cappi - I have to ask, are you based in the uk? Some of what you suggest could indeed be done, eg stopping blood flow, but the suggestion that you would get a "list of drugs", and "use of anaesthetic creams", I feel are a little inaccurate.
Certain painkillers can indeed be used that are indeed available off the shelf, but antibiotics for instance are not, and the cascade system dictates that vets cannot even prescribe human licensed antibiotics,if there is an animal licensed product.
As for being shown how to perform surgery on an animal, this could possibly lead to that vet being sacked on the spot, and then facing Royal College Disciplinary Action. Dramatic I know, but dependant on the case a distinct possibility.
 
Apache has already given an insight into the hidden costs of running a high quality practice, and let's face it everyone wants the top class service when we are doing anything in life.

But ask yourselves how many business' / professions give 24/7 highly qualified advice, that often results in resolution of problems or comforting advice without charging you.

It would be interesting to see, how much the NHS costs everyone on a yearly basis, but that is a whole different can of worms!
 
I have a friend who is a vet, and in their practice the bill is discounted according to the ability of the customer to pay, That is to say if some children bring in an injured animal they foudn by the roadside then as a vet they are morally obliged to try to help the animal. Therfore when someone brings in a pedigree gundog in a range Rover, you can bet the full invoice is charged!
 
Don't know what the fuss is all about, cost me 460.00 to have two of my ferrets infected bite holes treated, inflicted whilst they were fighting each other, a little incision and antibiotics placed in the wound and stitched up again, done the job 100%, but 460.00. just lucky only have 4 now, had fifteen last year, thank the lord that lot didn't have a punch up, would have been more skinter than I am now :rofl:
 
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