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Vet charges
Hi,
A few weeks ago we adopted a puppy and had him for 2 days before he passed away. He apparently wasn't doing well in the shelter either, but we thought it was just because he was afraid of the loud noises. By the second night, he was in critical condition and we made the decision to euthanize him since the vet said that the chances of him surviving was less than 50% chance and she couldn't promise us that he would even wake up even if they had pulled off a successive treatment and even if they did all they could to save his life. My girlfriend's mother called to try to get us our money back because our vet bill ended up to $600. She spoke to the office manager and the office manager said that they shouldn't have charged us for both euthanization and cpr, only either or, so we got our refund for putting him down, but our problem is that we were okay with them charging us for putting him down because it was our decision. However it was not our decision to give him CPR because by the end of the conversation with the vet technician it didn't seem like it would be worth trying to save his life. What can we do to get our money back? I'm really upset because they didn't inform us about what they were doing to him or ask for our consent. All they said when he handed him to the vet was that "They were doing what they can for him right now", which wasn't very specific and by the end of the night they charged us for CPR that we didn't give consent to..
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I agree with Rahzie. Just ask to be charged for the other part instead, especially if its the lesser cost. One problem I see here is that you and ? (the other part of "we") were not the ones talking to the vet about "Your" issues, you had a girlfriends mother calling them? So I am guessing that the other half of "We" is either a girlfriend room mate, your boyfriend, husband, or a parent or sibling. Between the two of you, one should have been able to discuss things with the vet and get some really straight and clear answers. In situations involving money, and a service you initiated, its best to get the advice from someone else but handle it yourself, speaking directly to the vet.
When it involves critical care for a pet taken to a vet, the vet must make sure they have explained all possible scenerios and what does the owner want done just in case.
You mentioned a conversation that seems to have occured before treatment at the time you took the puppy in to the vet regarding CPR and you said,
" However it was not our decision to give him CPR because by the end of the conversation with the vet technician it didn't seem like it would be worth trying to save his life." How clear were you with the vet tech. or them with you. Did you have any questions in your mind. Did you just think that it wasn't worth it, and say something like, "Well, it doesn't sound like it's worth giving the dog CPR." That is not a clear enough instruction. It is more of a comment sounding like an indecision. I wasn't there. I do not have a recording of every word said, but I am willing to bet that on both sides there was possibly failure to make oneself clear and I am willing to bet that instead of asking enough questions, that lots of assumptions were made on both sides, you and the vet tech. Try to learn from this to be very clear about what your wishes are.
I know what I am talking about because we had an older small poodle about 12 yrs old, we took her to the vet when on the morning of 3rd day she still had severe vomiting and diarrhea. We had no idea if she got into something poison in the neighborhood or if something internally was malfunctioning. Due to the age of the dog and us having very little income, we told the vet that we wanted to be informed what they find on some preliminary tests which would be the usual blood samples, urine/poop, but to not proceed with any life saving measures unless they spoke to us first and we had the cost because we had a limit to available fund to pay and they'd have to be told them that if something critical happened while she was in their care, like she stopped breathing, that they were to let her go, because the cost of CPR as they spelled out was already the max. of what money we had so any other things like the charge for the stay, IV fluids for being dehydrated, and medications we would be unable to pay for. We made sure to explain exactly how much we had in checking and what room left on a charge card...and that was it. She'd had a long happy life so if she died while they were doing preliminary testing, then so be it. If those tests didnt show up anything and they needed to do xrays or scans or something, we definitely could not afford that so we wanted them to contact us with every thing they discovered and we told them also not to put her to sleep until they had spoken to us on the phone. By leaving her there, we were only giving them permission to put her on IV and do some tests. Anything else had to be run by us. It turns out it was something poison she got into, like food poisoning and with some meds she was released to us and recovered.
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Since the administrator has told you that people are, as a matter of policy, only asked to pay for either CPR or the euthanasia, calling them and asking them to change what they are charging you for seems like the logical first step.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with adviceman. It's exceedingly unlikely your local Veterinary Medical Association is going find anything wrong here. It's exceedingly unlikely that your vet did anything wrong when they performed CPR. CPR is an emergency technique to prevent death from either heart failure, or more usually, respiratory failure. If they did not perform CPR when it was necessary, the result is almost certainly death. NOT performing CPR may have, depending on the circumstances, been an act malpractice. Performing it without your explicit consent, is almost certainly not malpractice.
You are not clear about whether they performed CPR on your dog prior to determining what was wrong, or prior to speaking to you, or afterwards. However, in either case they actually had a responsibility to keep the dog dying from issues that could be addressed by CPR. They didn't need your consent to perform CPR when an animal isn't breathing or their hearth isn't beating, anymore than the fire department would need your consent to remove your pet from a building when its on fire. Even if they knew that dog was going to die anyways - which they might not have known, at the time when they performed CPR.
If you feel you weren't treated probably by the vet, by all means make a complaint, but you also need to recognize the nature of emergency care. The vet's decision to perform CPR was probably not a decision which required explicit consent.
Also note that your mother likely signed a consent form when they pup entered the vet's care that included a provision allowing the vet to make choices about emergency care, when there wasn't time to consult with you.
So call the administrator and tell them you'd rather be charged for the euthanasia and not the CPR. They might be perfectly happy to honour your wishes and by all means file a complaint if you feel you weren't informed properly about what was going on, but you also need to recognize that you were all very upset, and that things were happening quickly and there isn’t always time to explain every detail of what is happening when the vet a.) doesn’t know exactly what is happening yet and b.) the puppy isn’t breathing. Although we are lacking a lot of the details from your question, it was not necessarily wrong for a vet to perform CPR, and it's very, very, very unlikely that is constitutes malpractice.
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Vets' like all doctors are licensed by the state. I would suggest you file a complaint with the state licensing department against the doctor and his practice.
Since an animal cannot speak for itself you as the owner must speak for it. You must decide what treatment your pet receives or does not receive. The Veterinary Technician overstepped the bounds of a Technician by taking it upon him/herself to care for the puppy without your consent to what was his/her intent to do for the puppy.
Since filing this type of claim with the Medical Licensing Board is a second cousin to a malpractice claim. You may want to have another conversation with the office manager. In this conversation you tell the office manager what you want as a settlement to this matter, IE; you will pay for putting the pet down but not the CPR. If this is not acceptable to them then you intend to file a complaint with the Medical Practice Board. Then it is up to you whether or not you follow through with filing a complaint.
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