At Alicia Pet Care Center, we understand that emergencies and urgent health issues with your beloved pets can arise unexpectedly. To address these critical needs as a busy animal hospital, we have implemented an urgent care system, designed to provide same day attention to pets in distress.

Urgent Care: A Dedicated Approach

Every day, one of our veterinarians’ entire day is devoted exclusively to urgent care appointments. This system allows us to see as many same-day emergency or urgent cases as possible, ensuring your pet gets the timely care it needs. Our other veterinarians working that day will see their regularly scheduled appointments.

How Our Urgent Care Works

• • Triage and Prioritization: When you bring your pet in for urgent care, our team will get a history from you and take their vitals and assess their condition. Then, we prioritize cases based on severity – for example, a pet that has been hit by a car will be given immediate attention over less critical cases like an ear infection, even if the latter arrived first.
  • Constant Monitoring No matter what, a pet who is under our supervision is being monitored closely throughout their entire stay with us. Additionally, we have a daily huddle where we discuss our urgent care patients and inform the entire team of how we are handling our urgent patients, taking them out for walks, prioritization, etc.
  • Pet Parent Communication: After the initial history, we ask owners to leave their pets under our care. We understand this can be difficult, especially leaving your baby when they are feeling sick, but it allows us to see the patient as soon as we are ready. We ask owners to please keep their phones nearby, as our team will call to inquire about the case, get permission for diagnostics, and discuss treatment options.

Balancing Urgent and Regular Appointments

While one of our doctors is dedicated to urgent care, our other veterinarians continue to see regular, scheduled appointments. Understanding that it is preferable to pet parents to have a scheduled appointment, we only start booking urgent care cases when these regular slots are filled. 

We have found this system has allowed us to see many more patients per day. However we cannot guarantee that we will be able to see every single client who calls on a given day. In some cases, despite our best efforts, we will still need to refer out to emergency hospitals. 

Our Commitment to Your Pet’s Health

Implementing this urgent care system is part of our commitment to being nimble and thoughtful with our scheduling. It allows us to see our sick patients promptly without compromising the quality of care for our scheduled appointments.

We hope that with this service, we can alleviate some of the stress and uncertainty that comes with pet emergencies and get as many pets seen as possible. Our team is here to provide compassionate, efficient care when your pet needs it the most.

Our office number is 949-768-1313 if you would look to book an appointment with us and we are located in Mission Viejo, CA. If you have more questions about the urgent care system, feel free to email us at aliciapetcare@gmail.com.

What Makes us the Best for your Pets?

APCC is skilled in emergency care, integrated medicine, preventative care and offer luxury pet boarding. We are leaders in Southern California in laparoscopic spays; a low-risk spay procedure that uses high tech operating equipment to enable a faster, more comfortable recovery. Our staff is highly trained and educated in animal care and truly care about providing the best service to you and your pet. In 2023, we were voted Best Veterinary Hospital in Orange County by readers of the Orange County Register.

• Pet Boarding
• Grooming
• Laboratory Facilities