Emergency Service Coverage – What to Expect
Lasalle Animal Clinic and the Sudbury Veterinary Association emergency rotation now uses Smart.Vet as a third-party provider for triage and telemedicine to help you access after-hours and emergency care for your furred, feathered and scaled loved ones.
If you believe your pet is experiencing an emergency and we are open, call our clinic at 705-560-7226. If we’re closed, follow the voicemail instructions to connect with an Ontario Registered Veterinary Technician (RVT) that works with Smart.Vet. If the clinic is closed, you can also call (705) 805-1582.
While waiting for an RVT, the answering machine will ask you about a number of symptoms which are high urgency symptoms. If these symptoms are present, the machine will prompt you to press a button to be advanced in the call queue. Talking to the RVT does NOT incur charges. They will ask you a series of questions to help decide how to best help your pet. This is called triage. This step will allow the RVT to either direct you to a local veterinary hospital for in-person emergency care or to telemedicine. In either case, the RVT will also provide you an estimate (sometimes a range) of cost for the emergency evaluation. If your pet needs in-person care, the RVT will then help facilitate that transfer and arrange a time for you to meet a veterinary team at their facility.
If your pet can proceed with telemedicine, the RVT will help you create an account which will be used for record keeping and billing. The telemedicine fee (usually less than in-person care with emergency fees) must be paid in advance (e-transfer, debit card, credit card). From there, you will be placed in a virtual consultation queue to wait for a veterinarian. If your pet’s condition changes while waiting, you are encouraged to call back even if you are already waiting in queue.
Once the telemedicine consult starts, you will be working with an Ontario licensed veterinarian. They may request photos or videos or instruct you on ways to acquire information that helps them help your pet! The veterinarian can then make recommendations for at home care, prescribe medications from veterinary clinics or human pharmacies, and in rare cases, may recommend transfer back to in-person care if they feel it is in the best interest of your pet.
**Save our phone numbers**
Our Clinic: 705-560-7226
After-Hours & Emergencies: 705-805-1582
We want to briefly explain why Lasalle Animal Clinic elected to work with Smart.Vet to help provide emergency care:
· It provides clients with the fastest access to veterinary professionals.
· It provides more economical access to veterinary care for a high number of cases. Prior to the change, we would often see ten or more cases in a day on call that were not life-threatening but were uncomfortable for the patients. These cases can now be diverted to the telemedicine pathway saving the owners some money in the process! These cases being diverted also allows our team to focus on the cases that need to be seen in-person and provide better, more attentive care. When we provided the triage ourselves, we spent a huge amount of time on the phone! With 50 or more calls being common in a day, it really tied up our team members who then could not focus on the pets in the hospital!
· We do recognize that in rare cases, a client may feel “double-billed” if they go through telemedicine and then are transferred for in-person care. This is frustrating. However, Lasalle Animal Clinic felt that the improved access to care and the improved care that Smart.Vet allows us to provide was a worthwhile trade for the majority of cases.
Important Update to Our After-Hours Emergency Policy
Dear Clients,
We are committed to providing timely, compassionate care when your pets need it most—especially during emergencies. To ensure that the most critical and urgent cases receive immediate attention, the Sudbury Veterinary Association (the group of veterinary clinics that rotate to provide emergency care) has made an update to our after-hours triage policy.
Effective immediately, when being triaged by the Smart.Vet RVT, a request to transfer to the clinic on-call will no longer override the standardized medical triage criteria. All after-hours cases will be assessed based on urgency, and only those meeting the criteria for in-person emergency care will be referred to the clinic on-call.
This change is being made across all participating veterinary clinics in the region to:
1. Prioritize pets in life-threatening or time-sensitive situations
2. Reduce strain on emergency services
If your pet experiences an emergency outside of regular hours, please call our clinic as usual. You will be guided through the triage process, and, if necessary, directed to the appropriate on-call provider. For more information about how the on-call service works with Smart.Vet, please see our previous post and announcement on this topic.
Thank you for your understanding and continued trust. This update ensures that we can be there for those who need us most—when every minute counts.
Warm regards,
The Lasalle Animal Clinic Team