Emergency and Critical Care
The University of Minnesota Veterinary Medical Center provides emergency medical services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Starting Monday, June 29, our Small Animal Emergency Room receiving will be closed from midnight to 8 a.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Please see below for more information.
Services
- 24-hour emergency service
- Supportive care and initial diagnostics for emergency patients
- Critical care monitoring
- Chest tube placement
- Tracheostomy tube placement
- Pericardiocentesis
- Thoracocentesis
- 24-hour ICU monitoring/hospitalization
- Bloodwork including profile, CBC, partial coagulation panels, blood gas analysis, and cross matching
- Radiographs
- Emergency endoscopy for foreign body retrieval
- Emergency advanced imaging procedures (fluoroscopy, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging)
- Emergency surgical procedures
Special equipment
- Ventilator
- Capnography
- O2 cages
- ECG/Blood pressure monitoring
- Fuji Sonosite
Changes to overnight ER hours at Lewis Small Animal Hospital
At the University of Minnesota Veterinary Medical Center’s (VMC) Lewis Small Animal Hospital, our priority is providing the highest quality of care to your beloved pets. Due to the widespread, national shortage of specialized veterinary personnel, we are currently facing staffing gaps on our overnight shifts.
To ensure our teams can safely and effectively care for patients during our busiest hours, we are making a temporary adjustment to our schedule.
What this means for you and your pet:
- Emergency availability: If your pet needs emergency care from Sunday through Tuesday, we are open 24 hours a day.
- Overnight closures: If your pet experiences an emergency between midnight and 8 a.m. on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, our ER will not be able to receive them.
- Alternative care: If you require emergency assistance during a closure window, please consult this comprehensive list of local emergency and urgent care resources to find an open hospital near you.
- Hospitalized pets: If your pet is already staying in our intensive care unit (ICU), they will continue to receive dedicated care from our on-site nursing staff. Overnight monitoring protocols are strictly enforced, with on-call clinicians available to support the staff as needed.
We are working tirelessly to recruit qualified professionals to fill these open roles and restore our full hours as quickly as possible. We sincerely apologize for this temporary inconvenience and thank you deeply for your patience and understanding.
If you have any questions about how this might affect an upcoming visit, please contact us at 612-626-8387 or [email protected].
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