March 26, 2020
Hello to our referring veterinarians. Thank you for taking the time out of your evening to join us. We as veterinarians are uniquely trained to understand the serious nature of a pandemic, and to understand the essential importance of veterinary medicine to our communities and the importance of Public Health.
The Lloyd Veterinary Medical Center (LVMC) has been closely working with the ISU Incident Command for COVID-19 response over the past month, and has been able to respond quickly to the rapidly changing situation. The pace of our policy changes outstripped our ability to notify our referring veterinarians beyond a few emails, so I welcome this chance to speak with you.
First, LVMC is still open. However, we have restricted our caseload in keeping with the AVMA recommendation to provide essential care for ill and injured animals and protect the health of animals that enter the food supply. Our services to production animals are operating as normal, to support the food supply chain. However, in our companion animal hospitals, we have cancelled elective procedures and restricted our caseload to emergencies. Note that by emergency we mean more than trauma cases. We are still seeing animals requiring specialty care, but they are initially triaged through emergency, and only transferred for specialty care if they meet the criteria of emergency. This criteria includes:
- Threat to patient life if surgery/procedure is not performed
- Threat of permanent dysfunction of extremity or organ system
- Uncontrolled pain or suffering
- Risk that the condition will rapidly worsen to severe symptoms
- Oncology emergency including Lymphoma, hypercalcemia, or uncontrolled bleeding
- Routine veterinary care for animals that enter the food supply
Note that we are not turning away patients that arrive. However, intake and triage is through our Emergency Service only. If they do not meet the criteria for hospitalization, we will provide triage and stabilization, but will not accept them as in-patients or transfers. However, our specialty services are all staffed and available to support you, the referring veterinarians. Please use us as an intellectual resource by calling our fully staffed front desk, and your question will be placed on the message board for a specialty clinician.
I’m sure many of you have altered your operations in light of the COVID-19 situation. We have as well. We have excused our clinical year students from the hospital, and are covering their duties with our staff, interns and residents. We are using curb-side check-in of patients, and not allowing clients into the building, but discussing the case by phone and processing paperwork digitally. We have altered our biosecurity protocols to conserve PPE in case it is needed for our human healthcare colleagues.
Our hopes are that Iowa will be able to escape the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that we can begin to return to more normal operations quickly. Until then, we will continue to provide essential care for ill and injured animals, protect our food supply, and support our referring veterinarians and the state of Iowa.
Stephanie West DVM
Director of Hospital Operations