New $50m Animal Hospital is Europe’s Most Advanced

Glasgow, United Kingdom (Sept 10th, 2009)

The doors have opened on a new Small Animal Hospital at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, which is claimed to be Europe’s most advanced of it’s kind.

Costing around $25million and 10 years in the planning, the new hospital will see a host of services offered, including a diagnostic suite complete with both MRI and CT scanners, a radioactive iodine unit for cats, an underwater treadmill and a pain and rehabilitation center. All of the hospital’s services are centered around a central atrium which is lit with calming natural light from above.

The new hospital expects to attract more than 11,000 visits from across the UK every year. When pets first arrive at the hospital, they are assessed in one of the thirteen new consulting rooms. From here they can be moved to any one of a number of specialist areas, including a center for comparative oncology, a a unique pain and rehabilitation center with an underwater treadmill, and a diagnostic imaging suite complete with an MRI scanner and CT scanner. The MRI and CT scanners will allow for the diagnosis of neurological conditions such as slipped discs or brain tumors.

Professor Stuart Reid, Dean of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, said: “The opening of new hospital is a step-change in the treatment of small animals. It represents the latest in care for pets and is the most advanced such facility in Europe. The patients we treat will still receive the best care available, but this will now be in the best surroundings available. With cutting edge facilities and capacity for training veterinarians at all stages of their career, the Faculty will be using the building as a flagship for its clinical provision.”

The center also has an important role as a training hospital, where approximately 120 veterinary students and 30 veterinary nursing students will shadow specialists trained in all aspects of veterinary medicine, surgery and nursing.

“We are immensely proud of our Small Animal Hospital and feel sure it will provide a world-class service for the pet owners of the UK,” Professor Reid concluded.

This news story is independently sourced and PetPeoplesPlace.com does not specifically endorse products or services offered by any company referenced in this article, or benefit from any association with any companies referenced.

Posted:  Just One More Pet

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Doggy MRIs: Pampered pets receive state of the art health care

When a pet gets sick, many owners will pay almost anything to be sure he gets better.

Fluffy and Fido tug at an owner’s heart. So we buy the highest quality pet food or a special formula depending on if he’s young or old or too chubby. Or, for the more holistic-minded, an owner might opt for an organic, vitamin-enriched dog or cat food.

And when a pet gets sick, many owners will pay almost anything to be sure he gets better, including chemotherapy for cancer, a kidney transplant or hip replacement surgery.

Humans have ancient relations with their animal companions. Burial evidence of cats as pets dates back over 8,000 years and for dogs about half that long. These early pets provided their masters with both companionship and survival skills such as hunting assistance, according to experts.

Over the years, as domesticated cats and dogs became increasingly docile, the pet-human relationship evolved. And while an animal’s survival instincts may have been compromised along the way – how many of our pets could actually support themselves in the wild? – there are some perks.

Today, with pets considered more like four-footed people, owners are laying out big bucks for such pet-pampering services as styling salons, doggie day camps, and massage therapy.

And modern pets are also reaping the benefits of human technological advances with more animals receiving medical treatments such as chemotherapy, organ transplants, radiation, CAT scans, MRIs, laser surgery, root canals and even braces.

And in the case of MRIs, “your dog or cat can get an MRI faster than us as humans,” Randy Valpy of Petplan Insurance told the Toronto Star.

According to the report, these increasingly advanced health care options for animals come at no small expense. A dog or cat can receive state of the art imaging, for example, for about $1,000 and radiation therapy for as much as $5,000. And if you want an ultrasound, prepare to pay from $400 to $800.

The Ontario Veterinary College’s Teaching Hospital at Guelph offers radiation therapy for dogs and cats with cancer. Treatment of an animal ranges from $500 to $5,000.

Depending on the severity of the condition, an owner can pay tens of thousands of dollars for a pet’s veterinary care. And as a result, more people are considering pet insurance as a means of protecting their animals – and their wallets.

“We’ve seen invoices that run from $10,000 to $30,000 to treat a variety of conditions,” said Peter Weinstein, medical director for Veterinary Pet Insurance in California. The company sold more than 360,000 pet insurance policies in 2005, vs. 157,000 in 2000.

And about 1,100 U.S. companies offer VPI’s pet insurance as an employee benefit, he added.
Depending on the plan, pet insurance in Canada can cost from $9.95 to $90 a month, with the average cost somewhere around $30. Many insurance companies, including Petplan, Petcare, and PC Financial Pet Insurance, offer potential customers online quotes for a range of coverage plans.

Sophisticated medical treatments and surgical techniques have undoubtedly boasted the life span of pets. “Thirty years ago in the U.S. the average age of a dog was 4 years; the average age of a cat was 3 years,” Bonnie Beaver, past president of the American Veterinary Medical Association told CNN.

Today, the average lifespan of a dog is between eight and 12 years, says Beaver.

Pet owners report ‘unconditional love’ as the main reason for Fido and Fluffy-fretting— to the tune of billions of dollars in North America each year.

Article By: Cynthia Ross Cravit – 50Plus.com

Posted:  Just One More Pet

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Best Medicine in Canada… Gone to the Dogs~

Innovations (in medicine) like birth control pills, cholesterol medication, robotic limbs, and many other things, would not have happened without the possibility of big profit, said Grace Marie Turner of the Galen Institute.

“I want companies to come up with cures for Parkinson’s, cures for cancer, cures for Alzheimer’s. Unless there is a reward for them to do that, we’re not going to have those new medicines,” she said.

Some of the best, most innovative treatments and most rapidly-delivered care happens through this pursuit of profit. Even in Canada, you’ll find one area where they offer easy access to cutting edge technology.

CT scans and MRIs, hip and knee replacements: available 24 hours a day and without a wait.

“If I see a patient that’s torn a cruciate ligament in that patient’s knee, we can generally have the patient scheduled for within probably a week,” said Canadian Dr. Terri Schiller.

But you have to bark or meow to get that kind of treatment. Schiller is a veterinarian and her practice makes a profit treating cats and dogs.

Want a CT scan in Canada? Private veterinary clinics said they can get a dog in the next day. For people, the waiting list is a month.

“Many clients will come here with their pets and as they’re leaving, it’s, ‘Next time, I get sick, I want to come here. I don’t want to go to the regular hospitals,’” said Schiller.

Source:  True Health Is True Wealth – Full Article:  Healthcare:  Does Canada Do It Better?

Posted:  Just One More Pet

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Daily Chart: Pet Theories About Health-Care Spending

Daily Chart: Pet Theories About Health-Care Spending

This chart by Cato’s AEI’s Andrew Biggs has been snaking its way around the blogosphere for the past week:

And it’s gotten approving [update: and skeptical!] chirps from Megan McArdle, Tyler Cowen,Jim Manzi, Arnold Kling and Greg Mankiw and others, a good deal of whom parrot the old line about how this shows that “The reason that we spend more [on healthcare] than our grandparents did is not waste, fraud and abuse, but advances in medical technology and growth in incomes.” If it were waste, fraud and abuse, wouldn’t you see the difference in the animal market?

But let’s not flap about this too much. The chart is hounded by some fatal problems. John Schwenkler gently badgered me into trying to make a new version of this chart that deals with some of them, and I’ve been monkeying around with the data for the past couple of days. But, for reasons I’ll grouse about after the jump, I can’t reproduce a better version of this chart. (Scott Winship and Zubin Jelveh have ferreted out some of the missing data.) What I can do is graph the growth of pet food spending over the same period, and then list some of the reasons why the original chart doesn’t prove much at all. (And cut out the dumb animal puns.)

1. This data is drawn from the same source (the Consumer Expenditure Survey) as the original chart. The raw slope of the pet food spending line is actually higher than the raw slope of the veterinary spending line. The normalized slope of the veterinary care line is a bit higher, but both are higher than average economic growth over the same period. Does this mean there is something unique about the two health markets, or something unique about the two animal markets? Or neither? I have no idea.

2. As Schwenkler and Manzi and others have pointed out, the original chart does not have per capita data. But of course we only care about how much is being spent on health care per person or dog. If the population grows quickly, the overall level of spending will grow with it. (Incidentally, this is why I’m having trouble reproducing Biggs’ chart exactly: I can’t find the number of total pets per person in the country between 1984 and 2006. And, to be extra cautious about it, I’d also need to know something about how the population has changed — more ponies or parakeets or whatnot.)

3. Even if the chart made the same point on a per capita basis, I’m not sure why it would be surprising. You don’t really have insurance or adverse selection in the veterinary market. But you do have large information asymmetries (the vets know more), large demand uncertainties (the need for veterinary care springs up uncertainly), large supply constraints, and a whole series of new patent-protected treatments that can lead to market failures.

4. Even if none of the problems in # 3 turn out to exist, I’m not sure why the growth of veterinary spending is a point in favor of conservative theories about the growth of health-care spending. Two of the most commonly cited conservative reasons for the rise in health-care spending are (1) The tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance; and (2) malpractice liability, which is supposed to lead to defensive medicine and higher costs. But neither of those things happen in the veterinary market! If the original chart is correct, then are these things not really problems?

My overwhelming suspicion is that the chart does not tell us much that is useful about the market for medical care. I spoke with Andrew Biggs yesterday, and he very kindly shared his data from the expediture survey (which is not publicly available). He also cautioned against taking any of this too seriously. 700 words and two charts later, I agree.

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Source:  the Atlantic – The Daily Dish

Posted:  Just One More Pet