ROCHESTER, NY – Rochester Emergency Veterinary Services or REVS opened this Thursday night. It is the only overnight facility within an hour of Rochester.
The opening comes months after Veterinary Specialists & Emergency Services in Brighton, once the area’s 24-hour emergency vet clinic, closed permanently. It closed in November due to staff shortages.
With the closure, the closest emergency care options in Rochester became Orchard Park Veterinary Medical Center in Buffalo, Veterinary Medical Center of Central New York in Syracuse, and Cornell University Hospital for Animals in Ithaca.
Dr. helped. Brenda Buck in search of a new space. He and two other vets run REVS as a nonprofit because, in their words, they know the community needs it.
Right now, there are about four services in the Rochester area that offer emergency walk-ins. And none of them run overnight.
REVS now operates out of Burns’ other business, the Animal Hospital of Rochester. But the goal is to get REVS its own space.
Even if they had the facility, Buck said they would need to raise a minimum of $200,000 to pay for the staff and equipment for REVS.
They were able to do that on donations alone and, were approved for a $100,000 grant from the county. So, with nonprofit status, how much does it cost? Fair market price is how Burns describes it. Because the goal is to create a space that serves the needs of this community. Today as in many industries, animal husbandry is experiencing a severe labor shortage. That, along with high turnover, helped send the last 24/7 clinic under.
“It was corporate medicine that kind of took over and after that happened, we lost our emergency care and we wanted to make it about our community, about helping our community, our local pets and our staff. We want the staff to feel valued. We want to put our resources and our revenue back into the staff, into the facility, to provide more care and then back into our community.
The corporate medicine mentioned by Dr. Buck is Thrive Pet Care. They own a large minority of about 40 clinics in Rochester, but they have hundreds across the country. They bought the clinic in 2021. Dr. Buck said he believes a nonprofit format will help them take care of the staff and keep this ship afloat for years to come.
The clinic is open overnight from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. on weekdays and 24 hours on weekends, according to its website. You can get more information and donate here.
