Here you will find information regarding our policies on Prescription Medications, Prescription Diets, Technician Appointments, Estimates, and Online Pharmacies. If you have questions about any of our policies and procedures, please contact us for more information.
Prescription Medications
In California, all prescription medications require a current, valid, doctor-patient-client relationship. This means that we must examine the pet at least once per year (every 12 months) for us to prescribe medications or authorize refills. This includes some prescription flea/tick medications, such as Nexgard, Bravecto, and Comfortis, and all heartworm prevention products, which includes Heartgard, Trifexis, Interceptor, Revolution, and Advantage Multi.
We will do our best to refill medications promptly, and to authorize faxed refill requests from outside pharmacies. However, immediate refills are not always possible due to inventory challenges and the unpredictable nature of our daily schedule, so please call ahead for refills, and do not wait until your pet’s medications run out before calling.
Prescription Diets
Some pets benefit from a prescription diet, formulated for their medical needs. We can order any of the the Hill’s Prescription Diets. Our food orders are placed on Thursday, and they are generally delivered by Friday afternoon. If your pet requires one of these diets, please call us to place your order by Wednesday evening, and allow enough time for the food to arrive before you run out.
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If you prefer to buy your pet’s prescription diet elsewhere, or your pet needs a diet from a different line of veterinary diets, we can either write you a prescription, or you can order the food online and an authorization will be faxed to our office.
?In order to authorize veterinary diet orders, we require each pet have been examined within the past year. This allows us to ensure the prescription diet is still appropriate for the pet, and gives us an opportunity to determine if their medical condition requires any additional monitoring or changes in treatment.
Technician Appointments
In some cases, you can save time and money by scheduling an appointment with one of our technicians, instead of a full exam with one of the doctors. Technician appointments can be scheduled for well pets who need vaccines, their annual heartworm test, or grooming services such as nail trims or expressing anal glands. For a pet to be scheduled with the technician instead of a doctor, they need to have been examined by one of our doctors within the past year.
Estimates
We do our best to provide estimate for all visits and procedures. If you are given an estimate for a procedure or diagnostics to be performed on a different day, the estimate will be valid for 30 days. We may be able to perform the procedure after 30 days, but be advised that we may need to update the estimate.
Online Pharmacies
While we make every effort to promptly authorize prescription requests received from online pharmacies, our doctors want you to know that it is important to be careful when purchasing medications or veterinary products from these sites. You can read this Consumer Update from the FDA about what to look for in an online pet pharmacy. Most importantly, the FDA recommends using only websites that belong to a Vet-VIPPS accredited pharmacy. This seal should be displayed on the pharmacy’s website.
In particular, we want our clients to be aware that the monthly heartworm and flea preventatives we recommend for all of our canine patients (Heartgard, Nexgard, Credelio, and Interceptor Plus) are only supposed to be available through veterinarians (Merial, the manufacturer, does not sell directly to online pharmacies). What this means is that any of these products obtained online were purchased by the pharmacy through unauthorized channels, and the company cannot guarantee the products as they normally would. For example, if you bought Heartgard from our office, Merial would guarantee the product and cover any costs associated with an adverse reaction, or if your pet were to get heartworm disease while using Heartgard. They cannot do the same for products purchased through online pharmacies because they have no control over how the product was handled, stored, or even whether or not it was contaminated.
We have not had any clients report problems with these products from online pharmacies, but we want you to be aware that we recommend all veterinary-exclusive products be purchased directly from veterinary offices, and to know our reasoning for doing so.