Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 3, 1994 TAG: 9402030214
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY MARIE JOYCE THE FREE LANCE-STAR
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG (AP) LENGTH: Long
Jim Lemon doesn't know whether anything could have been done to save his dog.
The point, he says, is that there was no one there - no veterinarian, no technician - to try to help Peanut when her condition took an unexpected turn for the worse.
When he left his dog at the vet's, he assumed that there would be someone there to watch her. He says that most pet owners probably believe the same thing. And most veterinarians, he claims, do little to disabuse people of that notion.
"I believe they are perpetrating a fraud," says Lemon, a retired Falls Church businessman.
Peanut's death five years ago and Lemon's subsequent crusade for reform have led to a bill now before the General Assembly, the Animal Hospital and Care Bill, known informally as the "Peanut bill."
If passed, it would require any veterinarian's office that wants to be called a "hospital" to keep a veterinary technician in the building around the clock. A technician is the veterinary equivalent of a nurse.
Veterinarians who do not want to pay for round-the-clock monitoring would have to call their facilities "clinics," and they would not be allowed to keep animals overnight.
The bill offers some exemptions for doctors who treat farm animals.
At present, virtually no regular veterinary office in Virginia provides routine, overnight monitoring. Such monitoring is not required under state regulations, says Jack Lewis, executive director of the Virginia Veterinary Medical Association, a professional and lobbying group that is preparing to fight the legislation.
Care of animals that need intensive monitoring during off hours is usually left to emergency overnight clinics, he says, which can cost as much as $200 a night. In some cases, Lewis says, the vet and patient may make special arrangements to have a sick pet watched at a regular facility, but the owner must pay extra for this special care.
Rules of the state Board of Veterinary Medicine forbid a doctor from leaving unattended an animal that is in critical condition - for instance, an animal that is still under anesthesia or one that has been hit by a car and is still in shock, says Dr. Harvey Phillips, an Ashland veterinarian who sits on the board.
But Peanut's condition wasn't critical when she was left at her doctor's office overnight.
She had been taken to the doctor because of a throat infection. When Lemon went to pick her up at the end of the day, he was told to keep her throat wrapped in hot compresses and give her medication every four hours, Lemon recalls.
At the last minute, however, the doctor decided that it would be good to keep Peanut in the hospital one more day.
The next morning, Lemon was told that Peanut had died overnight of asphyxiation. He never found out exactly what caused her to asphyxiate. And he assumed, Lemon says, that someone at the hospital had been giving her medicine and compresses and had tried to save her.
It was later, during a casual conversation with a hospital employee, that he learned the truth: Peanut died when the hospital was unattended; employees found her body when they opened the office the next morning.
"I just thought that no matter what they did, she died," says Lemon. "It didn't even dawn on me that she strangled to death . . . because no one was there to try to save her life."
The Peanut bill is primarily a consumer protection measure, says its sponsor, Del. Karen Darner, D-Arlington.
Most people who see the word "hospital" in a name assume there is some type of overnight care, just as there is at human hospitals, she says.
Darner says this assessment is based on conversations she has had with many pet owners.
And, Darner and Lemon say, some veterinarians have gone to great lengths to disguise the fact that they have no overnight medical staff.
"They'll say, `Your animal died overnight.' If they're pressed, they'll say, `We came in this morning and found him,' " Darner says.
Two years ago, at the prompting of Lemon and his supporters, the General Assembly passed a law saying a vet must give a pet owner a disclaimer to sign when an animal is admitted overnight. The disclaimer states the hours during which there is no monitoring.
Darner says some vets have taken advantage of a loophole in the law by burying the statements in other documents to be signed.
Veterinarians are gearing up to fight the Peanut bill tooth and nail. They say the provisions are unnecessary and costly.
Lewis says there are not enough veterinary technicians in Virginia to staff animal hospitals overnight. Licensed technicians must undergo two-year training programs, he says, and only two colleges in Virginia offer the training.
"If we were to take all the animal technicians on the Eastern Seaboard, there would not be enough to man the [facilities] in Virginia alone," he says. "I must have a dozen requests on my desk asking for animal technicians."
Darner says she has an answer for that: "Well, then, don't call yourself a hospital. That is the easy way out." And a provision in the bill would give the hospitals until 1996 to hire the staff, she says.
Lewis and Phillips also say that having a technician in the hospital overnight would be a pointless gesture, since state regulations do not allow the technicians to perform any medical procedure on an animal unless there is a vet on the premises.
Darner counters that a technician should be there, because his or her training would help in determining when an animal's symptoms meant serious trouble. The technician could call in a vet, she says.
The veterinarians' association says the cost of hiring more technicians would raise vet bills. Lemon says the cost of one extra employee, spread out among all the patients, would be negligible.
If the Peanut bill is passed, Lewis says, most vets will turn their facilities into clinics and stop taking patients overnight. Even then, he says, it will be expensive for facilities called "hospitals" to change their names, and it might hurt the name recognition of places that have been in their communities for years.
He is not convinced that consumers equate the word "hospital" with overnight care.
"Nobody complained until one person [Lemon] creates chaos," he says.
Darner would not estimate the odds that the Peanut bill will be passed this year. The measure died in the Senate last year.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB