Exterior view of the new Veterinary Emergency Group facility in Buffalo Grove.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
Surgical table at the Veterinary Emergency Group’s new facility in Buffalo Grove.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
Veterinary technicians, from left, Molly Getz, Brooke Toriani and Eli Klemak perform CPR on a dog mannequin at the new Veterinary Emergency Group facility in Buffalo Grove.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
The new Veterinary Emergency Group facility, left, is near the new NCH medical building on Lake-Cook Road just east of McHenry Road in Buffalo Grove.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
The “hospitalized patient ward” at the Veterinary Emergency Group’s new facility in Buffalo Grove.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
X-ray room at the Veterinary Emergency Group’s new facility in Buffalo Grove.
Joe Lewnard/[email protected]
When your pet needs emergency care and regular animal hospitals are closed, the Veterinary Emergency Group is always open.
Veterinary Emergency Group opened its fifth facility in Illinois at 43 McHenry Road in Buffalo Grove; there are two in Chicago, one in Naperville and one in Oak Brook.
The Buffalo Grove facility, like its counterparts, offers daily urgent care.
Medical Director Keith Mihansky said animals that need emergency treatment are seen by a doctor right away.
“The triage process starts the moment they walk in the door, which is different from a lot of veterinary hospitals where they’re put in a room. They wait a long time,” he said.
The goal, he said, is to immediately diagnose patients by a team of doctors and nurses.
“They can see a doctor right away, which is different from most vet hospitals,” he said.
During the process, pets are kept with their owners.
“We never separate people from their pets during the process,” he said. There is even a place to sleep or nap and blankets and blankets for overnight stays.
Medical expertise is also available over the phone.
“Before anyone even walks in with their pets, they’re able to call and talk to a doctor 24/7,” Mihansky said. Calls are forwarded to a medical team that fields questions.
Animals treated at the hospital run the gamut from common dogs and cats to reptiles, birds and exotic species.
“We’ll see if it fits through the door,” he said.
Most treatments are administered in a central area, although rooms are available for hospitalized patients, such as the “cat ward,” a quiet area for cats.
The facility has a lab and pharmacy area; capacity to hospitalize up to four oxygen-dependent patients; confined spaces for up to 50 patients; runs for larger dogs; an X-ray room; and an endoscopy tower for non-invasive procedures to remove foreign objects, mainly from the stomach.
Mihansky said veterinarians will treat gastrointestinal episodes, including vomiting and diarrhea; cases of trauma, such as limping dogs; animals that eat foreign matter; and animals with heart and kidney disease. They will also perform surgical procedures, such as a Caesarean section.
“All we do is emergency care here,” Mihansky said. “So we don’t do anything that is normally done in a general practice. We stick to what we do best.”
