After-hours phone answering for vet clinics: options, rules and emergency routing

What Ontario requires after hours

Ontario vets have to arrange after-hours care for their patients and tell clients how to reach it. The College of Veterinarians of Ontario's policy statement on after-hours care, revised in November 2023, summarises Section 20 of Regulation 1093. A licensed veterinarian:

• Is responsible for reasonably prompt services outside regular hours when medically necessary, for animals they recently treated or treat regularly.
• May provide those services personally, through associates, or by referral to another vet who has agreed to cover the practice.
• Must tell clients how to access care outside regular hours, and promptly tell them about any change.
• Must keep a record of each time after-hours information is given to clients.
• Must keep caring for the animal after an emergency clinic discharges it, until care is no longer needed or the client has had a reasonable chance to find another vet.
• Must tell clients about supervision arrangements when an animal stays in the clinic overnight.

The CVO's accreditation checklist asks for evidence of an after-hours arrangement and that clients know about it. In other words, an inspector may well ask what happens when your phone rings at 11 p.m.

In Ontario, vets must tell clients how to reach care after hours, tell them promptly when that changes, and keep a record that they did.

After-hours phone answering for vet clinics: the options

You can answer after-hours calls with a recording, an on-call vet, a teletriage service, an answering service, an AI receptionist, or a mix. Behind the phone sits your care arrangement, and the CVO lists the ways to provide it, alone or combined: on-call service by yourself or with colleagues at the same facility or an in-house teletriage service; coverage agreements with neighbouring accredited facilities; referral to a 24/7 accredited facility that has agreed to take referrals; referral to an independent Ontario accredited teletriage service; and referral to an accredited emergency clinic. Whatever you pick, the phones have to deliver it.

You've got room to choose. The CVO says vets may decide which options suit their practice, don't have to keep the same ones all the time, and can set the times and limits of their own services, as long as clients are told.

Routing an emergency, whatever you choose

Every setup has to answer one question fast: where does a pet in trouble go, right now? Sort that out before you shop for tools.

Start by naming the destination: the emergency hospital or 24/7 facility you have an agreement with, plus its address and number. On a recording, that instruction goes first, before hours and directions. And an emergency should never end up as only a message. A voicemail or a logged note isn't care.

Add poison help, too. The AVMA's first aid advice tells owners to call their vet, an emergency clinic or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center immediately if a pet may have eaten something harmful. Then close the loop with your partner hospital on how their notes come back to you, because continuity after discharge is your responsibility under Section 20.

The AVMA also tells owners to phone ahead so the clinic can get ready. If your after-hours partner is getting that call, make sure they know your patients may be on the way.

The cost of the calls nobody answers

Most after-hours calls aren't emergencies, and a bare "we're closed" message loses them. They're bookings, refills, questions about hours, or a worried owner wondering whether to come in tomorrow. Send them all to a dead end and they'll call somewhere else, or wait until morning, when your front desk opens to a wall of voicemails and a cold coffee.

Moving routine requests off the phone helps. In PetGrid, owners book and message the clinic from the free app at any hour, and those requests land on the same schedule and in owner messaging for your team to pick up in the morning.

Where an AI receptionist fits after hours

An AI receptionist can take the routine share of night calls: hours, bookings into open slots, cancellations, messages. It can't replace your after-hours care arrangement, because it gives no veterinary advice.

PetGrid's AI Front Desk, a paid add-on rolling out as clinics' phone lines are connected, is built around that limit. It opens every call by saying it's the clinic's AI assistant, and it never gives medical advice. An urgent word puts the call through to your team at once, or after hours gives the caller the emergency hospital number you choose. Our guide to AI receptionists for veterinary clinics covers the details.

An after-hours phone checklist

Before your next long weekend, check that you have:

• A written after-hours arrangement, agreed with your partner hospital or teletriage service
• A recorded message and website that name it, updated before holidays and planned absences
• A record that clients were told, as Section 20 requires
• Emergency instructions first on every recording and script
• A way for routine requests to be handled without the phone
• A morning routine for messages, emergency hospital notes and follow-up calls

For daytime calls, pair this with our veterinary receptionist phone script.

Questions fréquentes

Lire les questions et réponses pour les cliniques

En bref

After-hours phone answering for vet clinics starts with your care arrangement and ends with a caller who knows exactly where to go. Pick the mix that suits your team, put the emergency instructions first, keep the message current and keep a record. Then give routine requests a way to reach you that isn't the phone.

Want to see how PetGrid's app and AI Front Desk take routine calls while sending emergencies to people? Book a demo with the PetGrid team.