There are three ways to refer a case to VSH: phone, fax, or via our website. We recommend that you call when a patient needs to be seen the day of referral so that our doctors and nursing staff can be prepared for the patient's arrival. A tablet of our referral forms can be obtained by calling the front office staff at 233-4911, or e-mailing our customer service supervisor, Jennifer Finn at jennf@vshcarolinas.com. You can ask our staff to contact the owner to make the appointment with whatever referral method you choose.
A client must be referred from a veterinarian to make an appointment with one of our specialists during the day. VSH will see walk-ins during emergency hours and we will treat any critical patient at any time if an owner calls with a crisis. If a pet owner calls to inquire about an appointment and says they do not have a veterinarian we will make the appointment and work with them to select a veterinarian for routine health or follow up care.
The front office will fax a short note notifying you that your patient has been admitted to VSH. The results of all laboratory work sent to Antech are faxed to the referring veterinarian before they are distributed to the VSH doctors. Every patient that receives treatment at VSH has discharge instructions which are reviewed with the owner. These discharge instructions are faxed to the referring veterinarian at the time of discharge. The discharge instructions may also include a summary of the case or of the disease process present in the patient. VSH doctors will write a referral letter after discharge if there is pertinent information for the referring veterinarian which was not included in the discharge instructions. Emergency doctors will write a case summary if an animal has been hospitalized at VSH during emergency hours. This summary will be sent so that it's available at your office the next business day after hospitalization. A fax will be sent to you when any animal dies or is euthanized at VSH to let you know of this fact and that further information should be forthcoming.
Owners will often call to ask your opinion of our care because of the existing relationship they have with you and the trust they place in your opinion. They may relay information on the care or treatment of their pet which is confusing to you. We've discovered that in many cases owners may not communicate fully what we have explained to them. This is understandable considering the amount and complexity of information that we try to pass along. Owners may also feel more comfortable disclosing their true feelings to you as opposed to a VSH doctor whom they just met. Feel free to call our doctors to get detailed information and to provide your insight on the owner's needs. For complex questions it is best to encourage owners to direct these to the VSH doctors in charge of the patient.
Our goal is to work with you and the pet owner to meet the medical needs of the pet. We tell the owner that our conclusions are based on the information we have at the time that we see the pet. The information that you had may be different than ours or the pet's condition may have changed since you last saw the patient. In some cases an honest difference of opinion exists which may be hard for the owner to understand. We are not here to judge your medical management but to assess the patient and treat any problems noted. We encourage owners to speak directly with you if they have questions we can't answer about the specifics of care at your hospital.
We currently do not have an internship program. All of our emergency doctors have either completed an internship at a university or private specialty practice or they have prior emergency experience at a specialty hospital.
The emergency doctor will give pet owners the options to return the pet to your hospital for continued care or to continue care at VSH. We stress to the pet owner that they need to contact you before the transfer so you are aware of their wishes and expectations. We find that most owners will transfer their pet because of the ongoing relationship that they have with you. Our emergency doctors fax a case summary to your hospital the next business day after the animal is hospitalized. If the pet stays at VSH their care will be overseen by one of our specialists.
The best thing you can do is have the client make an appointment so that one of our doctors can do a complete review of the case. Different options can be given to the owner based on their wishes and the amount of money that they want to spend. In some cases diagnostics or treatment can be staged rather than happening all at one time. This back and forth conversation is difficult without our doctors dealing directly with the pet owner. For owners who need some time to repay a bill, we offer credit through two third party agencies (Care Credit and Wells Fargo). Owners can visit the "our fees" section on the owner's side of website to apply for Care Credit prior to arrival. The "our fees" section on the veterinarian's side of this site shows that owners frequently base their decision on their emotional attachment to the pet rather than strictly based on economics.
We try to use all of the information you send with the owner. Some tests will be repeated due to changing conditions in the patient or because of the time elapsed since the tests were originally performed. Radiographs may be repeated to obtain more detail within a particular region of the previous films. Preparing the owner for the possibility of repeated tests will make it easier for them to understand when they reach our hospital.
Our emergency doctors will handle simple surgeries such as repair of minor traumatic injuries. VSH surgeons are called in to do surgery on the more complicated cases. In general, if the animal needs a body cavity opened, one of the surgeons will be doing the procedure. Our neurologist is also on call to perform surgery on animals with spinal cord injury due to trauma or IVDD.
