To UW Veterinary Care’s clients and referring veterinarians, thank you for your patience during this uncertain time and the hospital’s closure due to the diagnosis of novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) in a School of Veterinary Medicine employee. Public Health Madison & Dane County has now contacted all individuals who were in direct contact with this employee. Our closure was required to keep you and the community safe.
To provide a degree of continuity of care for current patients, beginning on Thursday, March 19, UW Veterinary Care will be open to current patients who require ongoing treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy and amino acid infusions, as well as medically necessary appointments for current patients during regular business hours, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Emergency services will be available for life-threatening emergencies in both the small animal and large animal hospitals. Our veterinarians will also remain available to consult with other veterinary medical practitioners on emergent cases and urgent questions.
Our pharmacy will continue to send urgent refill medications out as needed. Please submit requests using our online refill portal and include relevant comments or notes to our staff in those requests.
However, we are not yet able to open for business as usual. We are aware that many of our clients had appointments cancelled due to the hospital’s temporary closure. We apologize for this inconvenience. Because of staffing shortages, we are not yet able to reschedule any new patients at this time. Once we are able to do so, we will share this information and other updates via email, the UW Veterinary Care website and Facebook page.
In the coming days, our available staff will contact current clients to schedule patients for ongoing treatments. Rest assured that if your animal requires ongoing treatments, we will be in touch soon. Due to limited staffing, we ask that you please wait for us to call you.
We are continuously reassessing and adjusting our operational plans based on the ever-changing situation on campus, within Wisconsin and across the country. As UW Veterinary Care incrementally reopens, please understand that we will do our part to keep you safe, as well as our staff, students and the community, by implementing screening procedures and policies.
Additional resources:
- UW Veterinary Care closure – client resources
- UW-Madison COVID-19 website – provides the latest information on campus plans and response, as well as FAQs
- American Veterinary Medical Association COVID-19 website – contains up-to-date information on COVID-19 and how the disease could impact veterinary medicine