Following on from the government announcements and with the rapidly changing situation we are all finding ourselves in regarding COVID-19 I would like to reassure all veterinary practices that we have put measures in place to ensure that our service to you will not be affected.
After speaking to several practices, I know that many are running on skeleton staff and some are only taking emergency cases. Poisoning may be one of these so VPIS will be here 24 hours a day as usual to support you. To reduce the number that come to the surgery we can triage the cases for you if your owners call Animal PoisonLine (APL) first and only the cases which require treatment will be sent to you. Owners will be refunded their APL consultation fee if you then need to call VPIS for treatment advice if they are advised by us that a vet visit is needed. This applies to around 20% of cases.
There will be very few VPIS staff in our offices from now onwards as we encourage our staff to work from home and therefore if you need to send us any forms or letters by post please could you also email them to admin@vpisglobal.com so that we ensure we receive them.
We hope that your veterinary teams and their families are staying well at this difficult time.
Nicola Robinson, VPIS Head of Service