Alpine Animal Hospital starts animal urgent care in Pocatello
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CHUBBUCK — A local veterinary hospital has taken on the task of introducing an animal urgent care to the Gate City.
Alpine Animal Hospital opened its animal urgent care program inside its building this week. The program offers extended hours and the ability for people to bring their pet in for same-day or walk-in appointments.
“That’s kind of what our main goal is, to set out to meet the needs of pet owners and the pets in our community that need care that they wouldn’t be able to receive otherwise,” Chief Operating Officer Sydni Southwick said.
Normal veterinary work hasn’t ceased at the clinic, its just now bolstered by the urgent care services — something Southwick said was a real need in Pocatello.
“We’ve transitioned and now are offering this urgent care structure (that is) pretty much the exact same structure for human urgent cares,” Southwick said.
The hospital hired three new veterinarians, doubling it’s previous number and allowing it to expand its services. Before, the hospital operated daily from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and now it operates from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“So we’ve got a doctor and a team of nurses available (for 12 hours a day),” Southwick said.
While starting an animal urgent care has been a conversation for “5 or 10 years,” the need increased with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve found over the last few years since COVID, the animal industry just exploded with people realizing remote work is doable and suddenly everybody got pets,” Southwick said. “So we’ve just been seeing a need in the community for walk-in and day of appointments.”
The way it used to work was that veterinary clinics would share on-call hours and take turns, “So if there was an after-hours emergency, that doctor would be the one who would see that case,” Southwick said.
In the last year, two out of the four hospitals had to back out of the rotation due to their doctors getting older and their caseloads becoming unmanageable.
“So it just came out through conversations with other clinics in town and talking about how best to serve our community,” Southwick said.
Southwick said they’ve now let the other clinics know that, “if somebody comes to you with an emergency or something that you guys just can’t fit in, send them our way.”
“They’ve been not only willing to do that but super thankful and thrilled to not have to turn these people away,” Southwick said.
Southwick said Alpine’s goal is to eventually have a 24-hour-care program, but they’ll need to hire more doctors to do that, and currently there’s a nationwide shortage.
“We’ve got the facility, we’ve got the support staff for it,” Southwick said. “It’s just finding the doctors that are interested and passionate about emergency medicine.”
It’s been surprising to Southwick to see how fast word has spread about the animal urgent care program around the community with the minimal advertising Alpine has done.
“That just proves there was a significant need in the community for it,” Southwick said.