Why are you closed on the weekends?
The weekends are a time for our staff to relax and spend time with their families. Compassion fatigue and burnout are unfortunately very common in our profession. These can affect the level of passion a staff member has for the field, and in turn decrease their motivation to educate, inform, and be interactive with you and your pets. We appreciate the work-life balance and want to maintain staff that are energized, passionate, and excited to provide care for your pets. Allowing a two-day rest in between the busy work week helps us accomplish this.
The human medical field has been practicing this for years- most medical offices are closed on the weekend. This is where our 24 facilities, such as urgent care and emergency rooms, take over to provide care. We work with excellent emergency and urgent care facilities to take care of your pets after hours and on the weekends. Please visit the contacts page for more information.
Why are you closed during lunch?
For many of the same reasons that we are closed during the weekends, closing for a designated lunch period allows our staff to decompress and rest. Staff are re-energized and ready to start the afternoon appointments, which allows us to provide better care and quality of medicine.
The human medical field has also been practicing this for years as well! For lunch- We close between the hours of12:30- 1:30pm. You are still able to contact us via email or leave a voicemail. It is our priority to return these calls as soon as we are back from lunch.
What is an Urgent appointment?
We schedule appointments with the doctor between the hours of 8:30-12 and 1:30-4. These are usually pre-scheduled appointments. We understand that you cannot plan for when your pet is sick or if your pet gets injured. We are here to help, but always have to keep the pet’s best interest in mind.
We allow 2-3 “Urgent Care” appointments per day. These are non-scheduled appointments in which your pet needs to be seen same-day. We work these into our schedule so that your pet can be taken care of. We have a standard of medicine that we want to always uphold, and therefore cannot practice that standard if we take unlimited appointments. It is very important that we can dedicate the time and resources to you and your pet and therefore have keep this in mind when scheduling appointments.
Our recommendation is always what is going to be the best option for your pet. If we feel that we cannot appropriately see your pet and address your concerns in a timely manner, then we may recommend visiting an emergency room. Sometimes in these situations, time is of the essence, and we want your pet to receive the best care with the best potential outcome. Emergency hospitals are structured to prepare for walk-in appointments and staffed to address these appointments efficiently.
The exam charge is structured differently for these appointments, but typically only amounts to a difference of $15. This allows us to utilize more staff and resources so that we can accommodate these additional appointments into our schedule.
Why do you not take drop off appointments?
Communication and Education are two of our important core values at Crosswinds. It is important to us that we take the time to communicate and understand your needs, as well as educate you so that you feel more informed about your pet’s health. We find this communication is done best in person during an appointment.
Drop off appointments historically make effective communication difficult. Often concerns are missed or educational points are not understood. When we do diagnostics, we like to take the time to show you the results and this can be difficult to do over the phone. We want our appointments to be interactive and achieve this best in an exam room.
It is also important that we adhere to practicing our standard of medicine, which includes designating times on the schedule for appointments. Drop-off exams are typically not during a scheduled time and rather worked into the schedule, often leaving staff feeling rushed. We feel you and your pet deserve more.
There are a few exceptions to drop-off appointments, which may include getting diagnostic testing done with a specialist, or diagnostic testing that requires your pet to stay with us for several hours. The staff is trained in how to handle these to insure there is nothing missed or mis-communicated.
