Taylor Tippin performs an ultrasound on a cat named Jovan at the new Veterinary Urgent Care facility in Central Point Friday. [Andy Atkinson / Mail Tribune]
Southern Oregon Veterinary Specialty Center’s new Veterinary Urgent Care clinic in Central Point offers an in-house blood laboratory and advanced imaging equipment, right next door to the 24-hour emergency vet center. [Andy Atkinson / Mail Tribune]
Southern Oregon Veterinary Specialty Center Director of Operations Craig Lassen shows the operating room at the new Veterinary Urgent Care facility in Central Point. [Andy Atkinson / Mail Tribune]
Southern Oregon Veterinary Specialty Center Director of Operations Craig Lassen shows the X-ray room at the new Veterinary Urgent Care facility in Central Point. [Andy Atkinson / Mail Tribune]
Taylor Tippin performs an ultrasound on a cat named Jovan at the new Veterinary Urgent Care facility in Central Point Friday. [Andy Atkinson / Mail Tribune]
A Central Point animal hospital has opened a new state-of-the-art veterinary urgent care clinic with the goal of treating thousands more pets per year in the Rogue Valley than they could before.
Southern Oregon Veterinary Specialty Center’s new Veterinary Urgent Care clinic is now open, offering pet owners and the local veterinary community a host of new resources from advanced digital imaging equipment to an in-house laboratory to a host of training facilities.
The new clinic aims to treat an extra 10,000 to 15,000 animals in the area, according to Southern Oregon Veterinary Specialty Center Director of Operations Craig Lassen. It celebrates its grand opening from 12:30 to 3 pm Saturday at 4801 Biddle Road in Central Point.
The center’s main campus — in front at 4901 Biddle Road — offers specialty services and round-the-clock emergency care, but primarily for the past couple of years emergency vets have needed to limit their services to only the most severe cases.
Especially for the past couple of years, the animal hospital has had no choice but to turn away numerous pets and owners concerned with issues that, while concerning for pet owners, were not acute enough for their veterinary specialists — sometimes referring them to care located hours away.
“Everyone who works here, they choose this profession because they care for animals,” Lassen said. “It’s as frustrating for us when we tell owners we can’t help.”
The new urgent care clinic will fill a niche for more severe cases than what would be covered in a scheduled visit with the pet’s primary veterinarian, but it still needs sooner than later during the clinic hours of 8 am to 8 pm six days a week. The urgent care center is closed Wednesdays for training.
Lassen said a shortage of veterinarians and certified staff is plaguing the entire industry, not just the Rogue Valley.
“It is a national problem,” Lassen said, describing among the barriers the high costs of veterinary school.
It’s compounded by similar challenges for veterinarians’ nursing staff — known officially as certified veterinary technicians — and a rise in pet ownership since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lassen said.
Helping SOVSC to expand are new facilities at the urgent care clinic such as a new training classroom and a surgery suite with observation windows designed to allow the veterinary center to develop and expand training programs while simultaneously drawing help to the area with training.
Lassen described efforts to expand SOVSC’s doctor mentoring program, which helps train emergency vets.
“Because of that, that allows us to expand our doctor’s capacity,” Lassen said, adding that the new urgent care facility works as a front-line triage center.
To keep up with the veterinary center’s need for certified veterinary technicians, Lassen said SOVSC offers a fully funded educational program that covers certification costs.
The draw for staff and pet owners are the amenities and state-of-the art equipment at the new urgent care center.
There’s a fully equipped blood laboratory for pets that will be capable of handling “basically all laboratory samples on site,” according to Lassen. Those samples previously needed to be processed out of the area.
“We have them at that moment,” Lassen said, which allows veterinarians to determine treatment plans faster and before the animal’s condition worsens.
The urgent care center also has advanced imaging equipment such as a CT scanner capable of accommodating even the largest dog breeds and all-digital X-ray and ultrasound equipment.
There’s a new intensive care and isolation ward featuring all-glass walls and all-glass cages to better monitor animals with contagious illnesses such as canine parvovirus or other pet respiratory diseases.
The emergency and urgent care facilities are on the same electronic veterinary record systems, making a patient animal’s records easily accessible by a specialist or the pet’s primary care veterinarian.
Being next door to the emergency care facility and being part of the same organization means that transfers are simple if an animal needs to be transferred.
“They are kind of a first line of defense,” Lassen said.
The urgent care clinic does not cover services that should be managed by a primary care vet such as vaccinations, spays or neuterings. For information on what qualifies for urgent care, see sovsc.com or call 541-282-7711.
Reach web editor Nick Morgan at 541-776-4471 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @MTwebeditor.