Coronavirus Update: A Message to Our Clients

The doctors of the Drake Center are extremely committed to patient care and we will not stop providing patient care unless there's some very extreme event, which I cannot even possibly imagine what that is. But nonetheless, we plan to be available to our clients to take care of your pets and needs that you have over the next coming weeks and possibly months.

 

Hi everybody. It's Dr. Michelle Drake at the Drake Center and catching you all, probably at kind of a stressful time, a little bit stressful for everybody, lots of anxiety about what's going on out there in the world. And obviously the ramifications of coronavirus.

First of all, I want to say, thank you to all our clients. You guys have been really great through the transitions we've had to make and I'm going to encourage everybody to spend a lot of time with their pets because they're great stress relievers. So anyway, onto more topics that we need to cover today. Just wanted to let you know that we, the doctors of the Drake Center are extremely committed to patient care and we will not stop providing patient care unless there's some very extreme event, which I cannot even possibly imagine what that is. But nonetheless, we plan to be available to our clients to take care of your pets and needs that you have over the next coming weeks and possibly months.

So we've had the every day, Dr. Boehme, I and Chris, our manager, we had to kind of assess where we are, what's going on and assess how we're doing business. So we are, we slowly progressed to a curbside type of service. So the way we're going to manage that is trying to limit your exposure to any other humans, keeping six feet away as much as possible and also to provide that for our staff. So we have cut down a little bit on the number of doctors in the hospital just because we can reduce the staff and then keep our staff as safe as possible too, but we want to be here for you guys. We are taking patients, we're taking exams every single day. We may be doing a little bit more on the phone and a little bit from the car window, six feet away, but we will be seeing your pets.

So we may want to be taking histories before you come in. So if you make an appointment, a doctor or technician may call you before. So try to stick near your cell phone after you've made an appointment if possible. So we get the history that we normally take before we address your dog or your cat's needs because the history is so important. It's one of the things really tough about tele-medicine with veterinary medicine is that Moki cannot actually tell me how he's feeling. Cats and dogs can be really hard at hiding symptoms and we can't ask them about how they're feeling. So it is really important for the doctors and technicians to actually be able to handle your pet to get a good idea and obviously to draw blood, take x-rays and do the care that we need to do. We actually have to have them with us to do that.

So there is a possibility for some tele-medicine. But really what we're just trying to do with this curbside service so we can actually put our hands on your pet and take good care of them. So we're going to continue to provide that. We are fully staffed, as much as we can be, any of our staff that's showing any symptoms at all of our respiratory illness. We're asking them to stay home, which every day that can change. There's lots of allergies and small colds out there that can resemble things that may be similar to coronavirus. And we're telling them for their safety and for the safety of everyone else in the building to stay home. So it's making every day a little bit of an adventure with staffing. So thank you so much for being patient with us. We are again here to take really good care of our clients and their pets and your needs. Any special needs you guys may have or certainly elderly shut-ins, any sort of immunocompromised situations. We are being really respectful of that and trying to care for you in the best way we possibly can. So just want to let you know we're here for you. And if you have any questions, we're here seven days a week still. Our doctors take calls til 10 o'clock every night for our clients and we want to take good care of you during this time.