OVERNIGHT MONITORING
FOR WHEN YOUR PATIENTS NEED OVERNIGHT CARE
How it works
In the event that you feel one of your patients requires overnight monitoring, we are here to support you and your clinic by providing our facilities and staff as an extension to your practice. We will work with you and your direction to ensure you patients and their owners receive the very best care available during this time.
What does overnight monitoring include:
- Veterinary assessment on admission and discharge; a veterinarian and at least one nurse will be on site and overseeing your patients care at all times.
- General medical or post-operative monitoring overnight.
- IV fluid therapy if required; patient must arrive with an IV catheter in place. A bag of 9% saline or LRS is included – you do not need to send us a bag of fluids unless your patient is on a different fluid therapy.
- 1x IV replacement if necessary. Additional IV placements, and any sedation required for placement will be charged.
- Blood pressure monitoring, as required.
- Medications on the following list are included.
- Opioids – buprenorphine, morphine, methadone, fentanyl +/- lidocaine, ketamine
- Antibiotics – cefazolin
- Please note that we are also happy to administer other medications you have prescribed, provided they are packaged and labelled clearly.
What does it cost?
Please be aware that this fixed price package is intended for stable patients only.
$375: admission after 6pm and discharge before 7.30am
$425: admission after midday and discharge before 7.30am OR admission after 6pm and discharge before 10am
$475: admission after midday and discharge before 10am.
What if the patient needs additional tests or treatment?
As long as the patient is stable, we can easily “add on” additional tests or medications. Usually these are requested by you such as a repeat radiograph or blood test overnight to make sure progress is as expected. We will provide a final estimate to the owner for any additional treatments when we admit the patient into the hospital, but we can give you a reasonable indication beforehand if you email us on vsae@vsnz.co.nz or call 09 3205645 and ask to speak to the A&E vet on duty.
If the patient’s status has changed en route, and/or our vet believes that he or she is not stable, this package won’t be appropriate. We will discuss this with the owner in the admission consult, and make an alternative plan for care. If you have let us know that you want to be kept informed, we’ll also involve you in this discussion.
Who has primary case responsibility?
You do. We are here to support you with caring for your patient so the goal with these patients is for you to remain the primary vet in charge of the case. Our in-house A&E team are here to support you by providing monitoring and treatment at your direction overnight.
To help us make this work, you should provide the A&E vet on duty the following (to arrive either in advance or with the patient):
- A full written relevant history of the patient,
- An overnight plan for the patient’s care
- Up to date contact details for the owner
- A brief handover of the case with the A&E vet, either by phone in advance or in person when delivered.
- Any medications provided must all be clearly labelled with both the drug name and concentration. If our staff are not comfortable giving the medication due to factors like unclear labelling or unsterile packaging, we won’t.
You can choose either to be contactable by phone overnight if you’d like to stay informed in the event of any changes, or you can just leave us to deal with it. For stable patients, of course this is unlikely to be necessary. But sometimes things don’t go to plan – if the patient’s condition does change or he/she becomes unstable, and we are not able to contact you, the A&E vet on duty becomes the primary vet for the duration of the hospitalisation. In this case, the owner will then be contacted.
