Pet owners have one more option for emergency veterinary services in the area.
MedVet, an emergency and specialty pet hospital open 24 hours a day, seven days a week in Vancouver, offers an expansive facility featuring specialty treatment rooms with high-tech diagnostic machinery. The hospital opened Oct. 31, 2023.
The hospital specializes in all manner of medical treatments and diagnostics, running similarly to an emergency room for humans, hospital director Benjamin Blood said.
The Vancouver facility, located at 2913 NE 72nd Drive, is the first MedVet location in the Pacific Northwest. It includes 16 exam rooms, an intensive care unit, six operating rooms, a computed tomography (CT) machine and a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. The facility has nine emergency room doctors, two neurologists, two internal medicine specialists, one surgeon and one anesthesiologist. A team of veterinary technicians with a variety of specialties supports the doctors, as well.
“We do have the latest, and the gold standard in medicine here, [with a] highly, highly trained and capable technician staff. We have the wonderful veterinarians, who can diagnose and lead the cases, but their support team is second to none,” Blood said.
A visit to MedVet, whether during the day or night, begins with triage, Blood said. Each case is evaluated, and care is administered to those in critical condition first. The process is similar to emergency medicine for humans, Blood said.
If a pet is critically injured and unable or unsafe to walk, they will be brought inside the hospital with a gurney. Emergency doctors will assess the pet and begin immediate treatment to stabilize the pet’s condition. Then, the veterinarian will discuss treatment options with the owner.
Emergency doctor Holly Dougherty said the hospital normally sees three to five pets an hour but is capable of handling more.
“There are times where we’ll have an influx on the ER and have anywhere from 10 to 15 cases,” Dougherty said.
Beyond medical emergencies, MedVet can also provide referrals for pets who need specialty treatment.
Cases that involve specialty medicine, like oncology, neurology and cardiology, can involve expensive diagnostic machinery or long-term hospitalization. MedVet exists to collaborate with family veterinarians to provide these treatments by referral, senior marketing partner Lisa Bell said.
Emergency medicine for pets is expensive, but MedVet veterinarians are also willing to work within a budget, emergency doctor Kristen Danielson said.
During her time at the Vancouver facility, Danielson has seen dogs come in with accidental fentanyl overdose. After the dogs stabilized from emergency care, their owners continued treatment with over-the-counter naloxone, also known as Narcan, as recommended by MedVet’s medical staff.
Danielson said the owners reported the dogs were well during a follow-up call.
“We see people who are able to do anything and everything, and we see owners who have a much different situation,” Danielson said. “Ideally, you can come up with something for them. You just have to be a little bit creative on how you use budget and what other community resources you can point them towards. It’s not always perfect medicine, but we get to do the best in the situation we’re given.”
MedVet’s facilities in Vancouver still have to grow. The current plan is to expand with more specialties, depending on the community’s needs, Blood said.
“Our pets are our family, and so it’s nice to be able to be that extension that can help when your family is in trouble,” Blood said.
Other area emergency veterinary services open 24 hours, seven days a week are Columbia River Veterinary Specialists and Pacific Northwest Pet ER & Specialty Center, both in Vancouver.
For more information go to medvet.com/location/vancouver/, or call 360-839-2704.
