Our Policies

Appointment Policy

Due to an increase in unconfirmed/no-show appointments, we reserve the right to cancel your visit if it is not confirmed before our hospital closes the evening before the appointment.

If you reach out to contact us after hours, we ask that you please leave a message specifically stating that YES, you will be there for your appointment, or NO, you will not be able to make it.

If it is the day of your appointment and we have not heard back from you, your appointment will be canceled. We understand that many appointments may have been scheduled months ago, and perhaps your pet no longer needs to be seen. If you are unable to keep your appointment, please call us in a timely manner at (301) 994-9919 so we can give your appointment slot to another pet in need.

As many of you know, we’re an incredibly busy practice! We work very hard to get our clients and their pets in as soon as possible. Our front desk team will be making you aware of our new appointment policy when they reach out to confirm your pet’s next upcoming appointment. Please keep in mind, we contact our clients via phone call, text, and sometimes email in order to confirm appointments.

Please make sure that our team always has your most up-to-date contact information on file.

Thank you for your understanding!

Client Etiquette Policy

Dear AKVH Friends and Family,

First, let us start by saying that the majority of our clients are wonderful, and we are immensely grateful for your trust, loyalty and appreciation for what we do. COVID has changed the way we interact with one another, the way we work, the way we shop, the way we view our health and unfortunately the way we treat one another. Many of you may not realize how COVID has impacted the veterinary industry. Doctors, support staff and hospitals around the globe are suffering from compassion fatigue, burnout, depression, and just plain exhaustion.

We are busy, actually busier than busy, but we still try desperately to find ways to work you and your pets in as much as we can. Please know we keep limited spots available each day for urgently sick patients. Unfortunately, most days we have many more people asking to be worked in than we have availabilities, so we do our best to triage over the phone.

We understand it is frustrating that non urgent sick pet appointments are booked out several weeks from now. Plus, we strategically book our well visit appointments about 6 months in advance, so we ask you don’t wait until the last minute to call. To help prevent problems we are booking next year’s appointment when you leave. Please know we are actively seeking amazing people to hire for every position in our hospital, including doctors. In the meantime, we are working tirelessly to care for all of your pets but the backlash we get is taking a toll; it’s wearing our team down. Frankly, the hostility, angry comments, sense of entitlement and demands has caused us to lose loved and valuable employees, therefore making us even tighter on staff and further stressing those we have. We are in this industry because we love animals, we love seeing them and providing care for them. We love hearing their stories and offering advice and education to our owners on how best to care for them. What we don’t love hearing is that “we don’t care”, how we are “only about the bottom line”, and that “we can’t be bothered to see a pet in crisis”. This is devastating to every single person in this practice, but to all of those in veterinary medicine. If there is anyone that cares about you and your pet, we assure you, it is us.

Have compassion, have patience, but most of all have respect for our staff and what we do. We will not tolerate disparaging remarks about staff or our practice, passive aggressive comments, disrespect, yelling or cursing of any kind, or lashing out over the phone or during appointments with staff.

Effective immediately, behavior relating to any of the above will cause you to be fired from our practice without further warning. We are sorry that this kind of announcement even needs to be made; we know that this will not apply to most of our clients. We hope this puts things into perspective for all of you, and that you continue to have patience and grace with us as we continue to navigate through these changing times. Thank you for your understanding.

Refill Request Policy

Effective 5/1/2022

To ensure your pet does not go without their necessary medication/prevention/prescription foods, we ask our clients to please closely monitor what they have and request a refill as soon as they can.

  • Please be advised prescription refill requests for medications/preventions filled “in house” will require 3 business days for completion.  However, please note, if a request is submitted Fri-Sat, it will not be ready until the following Wednesday.
  • Special order medications we request 10 days notice for refill due to shipping.
  • Prescription requests for medications/preventions/prescription foods that are sent to an outside vendor (Chewy, 1-800 Petmeds etc) will require 10 business days to review, complete and submit.

We thank you for your patience and understanding.

Respectfully,
The Doctors and Staff at All Kinds Veterinary Hospital