Dear Clients:

Thank you for your understanding and support in October and early November as we needed to adjust our availability to provide time for our Kempsville team to recover and self-isolate after positive coronavirus cases within our hospital. We are now able to fully staff most hospital shifts and departments. Our grooming service has reopened, and we are happy to now be able to accept new boarding requests again. However, we will need to keep some restrictions in place as we continue to navigate this pandemic. In order to reduce the chance of any future disruptions, we will be implementing the following:

• After-hour services will now be available to 24-hour members only. The one exception we will make to this rule is to allow all clients access to services on Sundays between 8am-5pm. Non-members will incur an additional $100 after-hours fee for veterinary visits; and will not automatically be enrolled for future services.
• Walk-In Fees have been adjusted in order to help cover staffing costs. As always, 24 Hour Members will not incur any additional fees.
• We absolutely love referrals!!!However, please be aware that we are currently only able to accept new clients as appointments only.

Our goal since July of 2017 has been to make medical care available for our patients, at our facility, at all times. We are happy that we have succeeded in creating that availability. However, it has become evident over the 3 years and most especially during the recent COVID outbreak at our hospital that we cannot adequately staff the after-hours to handle every client that wishes to have their pet seen. Unlike the typical emergency facility that relies on much higher pricing for services to cover the higher staffing costs, we are striving to maintain our normal prices 24 hours a day. That is only achievable due to the annual fee paid by our 24-hour members.

We do not want to raise our prices to make up for the higher cost because we feel that will hurt the ability of some clients to afford care for their pets. Instead, we have chosen instead to limit the after-hour services to those enrolled in the 24-hour membership. We feel that this change will help us to provide the right level of staffing during after hours. The small $50 annual fee for members is utilized to cover the higher staffing costs per patient rather than covering it with higher fees for services.

We would like to thank all our clients for their continued support and confidence in our hospital. We hope our changes will better help meet the need and expectations of our clients. For those who do not feel the after-hours service is of value to them, they do not need to enroll and will not experience an increase in cost for the services they utilize. If they have a pet that needs care outside of our normal hours they will still be able to get that care by visiting one of the five emergency hospitals in the area.

We hope that this new closer synchronization of caseload and staffing will benefit clients and patients.

Sincerely,

Acredale Animal Hospital Doctors and Staff