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Pet Care Extraordinaire
Posted on Sun, Sep. 03, 2006
By Stacey Burling
Inquirer Staff Writer
If ever there was a testament to how the status of dogs and cats has
climbed in recent years, it is Red Bank Veterinary Hospital.
Red Bank, which bills itself as the country's largest private
veterinary hospital, encompasses 58,000 square feet in an office park
in Tinton Falls, N.J. - about the area of a football field, including
the end zones. Its circular waiting room, adorned in the center by a
huge, cylindrical tank filled with tropical fish, is ringed by rooms
for specialties such as cardiology, dentistry and dermatology. In
all, the hospital has 24 exam rooms and 70 veterinarians.
Once almost exclusively the province of veterinary school medical
centers, specialty veterinary care is booming in private practice,
buoyed by customers who increasingly seek the kind of care for their
pets that they would want for themselves.
On a recent day at Red Bank, a surgeon was doing an anterior cruciate
ligament repair on an 8-year-old pitbull-cross that injured its knee
while running in the yard. In the operating room next door, a
neurologist was fixing a dachshund's herniated disk. Around the
corner, a Rottweiler with seizures lay on the X-ray table. Not far
from there, a cat was being prepped for kidney-stone treatment, and a
feisty, 15-year-old Maltese named Wesley was awaiting radiation
therapy for a sinus tumor.
About a mile away, in the practice's rehabilitation facility - a mere
11,000 square feet - two arthritic yellow Labradors were awaiting
their turn in two underwater treadmills.
Already, it is not enough. "We're actually running out of room now,"
said Anthony DeCarlo, a veterinary neurologist who owns the hospital,
which opened in December 2004.
The increased interest in private practice has left some schools
struggling to recruit and retain faculty and wondering who will train
future veterinarians. In private practice, specialty veterinarians
can command salaries of $100,000 to $200,000 and up. Not only is
compensation higher than in veterinary school hospitals, but vets can
also skip the research and teaching required in academia.
Jason and Kerri Fray of Marlboro, N.J., paid more than $2,000 to have
their Bernese mountain dog's cruciate ligament repaired and then
brought Reilly to physical therapy at Red Bank. "He's our child, our
baby," Kerri Fray said. "So, anything for him."
"The level of care that people expect and will pay for absolutely
shocks me," said Joan Hendricks, dean of the University of
Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine. Pet owners are
demanding hemodialysis, ventilator care, radiation and
chemotherapy. "They really, really want to do everything for their
pets."
Generally, fees for veterinary care are about 10 percent of charges
for similar human medical treatment, Hendricks said.
Private specialty practices, which often also provide emergency
services, have "mushroomed" in the last five years or so, said John
Albers, executive director of the American Animal Hospital
Association. Buildings more than 30,000 square feet are no longer
rare. "They seem to be proliferating rapidly," he said.
The private practices are getting bigger because clients like to have
everything in one place, and it makes economic sense for lots of
doctors to share expensive ultrasound, radiation, X-ray and CAT-scan
machines.
Albers said spending on veterinary care, now estimated at $16 billion
to $18 billion, had been growing 10 percent a year. Increasing use of
technology is a big factor.
In the Philadelphia region, private practices are usually a healthy
drive from the University of Pennsylvania's Matthew J. Ryan
Veterinary Hospital, a 100,000-square-foot behemoth with 11,000
emergency room visits a year. Because the next nearest veterinary
school is Cornell, central and north Jersey are particularly fertile
territory. Red Bank has opened a satellite emergency facility near
Atlantic City and hopes to begin adding specialty care there soon.
Many area practices, though still smaller than Red Bank, have also
been expanding. Rob Orsher, a surgeon who owns Langhorne's Veterinary
Specialty and Emergency Center, is looking for a 20,000-square-foot
space for his practice, currently crammed into 5,000. The West
Chester Veterinary Medical Clinic this year added a rehab facility
that includes an in-ground therapy pool and an underwater treadmill.
Among other area expansions:
The Center for Animal Referrals and Emergency Services in Langhorne
added 8,000 square feet this year.
Veterinary Referral Center in Malvern more than quadrupled its space
two years ago to 23,000 square feet.
In July, Metropolitan Veterinary Associates, a 20-veterinarian
practice, moved from its cramped 6,800-square-foot office into an
airy 18,000-square-foot Valley Forge building. Owner James Dougherty,
an internist, made sure there was even more room for expansion.
The demand for high-tech care is strong enough that, five years ago,
two doctors and a veterinarian opened Veterinary Imaging Centers in
Ambler, which houses the region's only MRI machine for animals. The
facility does about 70 scans a month at $1,600 apiece. Penn's
veterinary hospital, which has been sending MRI patients to Ambler,
is now installing its own machine.
Before the 1970s, there were fewer than a thousand board-certified
specialty veterinarians. Vets are still officially qualified to do
any kind of treatment on any kind of animal when they finish four
years of veterinary school. Board-certified specialists receive at
least another four years of training.
Out of the estimated 86,000 U.S. vets today, 8,200 are board-
certified specialists, up from 6,800 in 2000. Nationally, last year,
there were 129 veterinary cardiologists, 152 anesthesiologists and
160 oncologists in the country.
The popularity of specialists in private practices has made
recruiting tough for veterinary schools. They cannot come close to
private-practice pay, so their vets have to love teaching and
research, Hendricks said.
Despite all the competition, business at Penn's animal hospital has
grown 40 percent over the last five years, and it needs more staff.
The school recently hired three ophthalmologists, after looking for
years. In several cases, it has battled with schools in England for
specialists.
"Some of our residents are getting jobs for $185,000 in oncology,"
said Barry Stupine, the hospital's chief operating officer. "Well,
our full professors don't make that."
Primary-care veterinarians, who welcome emergency service because it
frees them from work on nights and weekends, have been embracing the
idea of referring to specialists. Specialty groups say they are
careful not to steal patients from referring vets.
Tim Ireland, a Newtown veterinarian and former president of the
Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association, said that he had missed
doing some of the more complicated cases himself, but that, overall,
the specialty practices had "elevated the standard of care."
The more-advanced care is costly. Vets say they always discuss money,
offering clients a range of options, including euthanasia for their
pets.
"In our practice, they usually go all the way," said Jon Nannos, a
surgeon at Metropolitan Veterinary Associates. "That's why they come
here."
People who choose specialty treatment almost always pay their bills.
Collection rates, vets said, are above 95 percent.
John O'Keefe of Malvern admits he was "a little bit shocked" when he
learned his black Lab Jesse's cruciate ligament repair would cost
$2,500 at Metropolitan. Jesse had a different leg problem earlier
this year that cost $2,000. "Believe me, when I heard the price, it
was, 'Oh brother, we have college tuition staring us in the face next
year.' "
But Jesse is a member of the family, and O'Keefe's four daughters
love the dog.
Bills have gone as high as $30,000 at Penn. While the average
specialty bill at Red Bank is $2,500, DeCarlo remembers one client
who spent $10,000 on a critically ill dog (the dog is still alive)
and another who went all out for a pet chicken who battled a dog and
emerged with a broken beak and leg. "I don't think anybody," DeCarlo
said, "should make a judgment you shouldn't spend $3,000 on a
chicken."
Contact staff writer Stacey Burling at 215-854-4944 or
sburling@phillynews.com.
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