Laboratory Service

Some house call veterinarians send all their lab work, from fecals to chemistry screens, to a commercial laboratory. Others may use a nearby clinic’s facilities for minor lab work, sending out the rest. And still others have some equipment in their home office, where they can perform fecals and other simple procedures. One house call veterinarian noted that by sending her fecals to the lab, she gets much better service and better results, since they routinely perform sedimentation and look for Giardia as well as the typical parasite eggs.
Where will you have lab work picked up? You can have a service routinely pick up at your home, or you can leave your lab specimens at a nearby veterinary clinic where they’ll be picked up with that clinic’s blood work. Either way you should open your own account at the lab, and simply use the clinic as a drop off point. The results will be faxed or phoned to your home office. With pick up at your home, you will need to make a drop box near your front door. Line it with styrofoam for insulation and put an ice bag next to the specimen bag to keep it stable. It is a good idea to have your own centrifuge so that you can separate serum from the clot; not doing so will alter your blood test results.
If you do some minor lab work at home, you will need a minimum of a microscope and centrifuge, as well as supplies (slides, cover slips, stains, fecal flotation solution, etc.). You might wait to see how much of this work you send out to the laboratory, then figure out how long it would take you to pay for your own equipment from the fees you charge for those services.