Most people don’t realize there’s a very important difference between a veterinary “assistant” and a veterinary “technician.”  For years New York’s Animal Care & Control has claimed it uses vet techs.

False.  The ACC uses vet “assistants.” Any Tom, Dick or Jane can be a vet “assistant”: no training, skill, or licensing required.

In contrast, a vet “technician” is a trained professional with the full title: “Licensed Veterinary Technician.”

Under the rules of the New York State Board of Veterinary Medicine (BOVM), the ACC should be using vet “technicians.”

What Shelter Reform didn’t know (until recently alerted by one of our FACEBOOK readers) is that last year ACC tried to persuade the BOVM to lower their standards [see page 4 of Vet Tech Times].  The ACC wanted a special exemption allowing them to use vet assistants instead of licensed veterinary technicians to perform key medical duties such as:

administration of oral, topical or injectable meds, collecting samples and performing basic laboratory tests, taking of radiographs and developing those radiographs, administering and monitoring anesthesia, and assisting with legally required or emergency surgical or medical procedures.

The ACC said they couldn’t find licensed vet techs willing to work for the “low pay scale at the shelters.” (Emphasis added). (See footnote below)

The BOVM conduct@mail.nysed.gov , the NYS Association of Veterinary Technicians nysavt@gmail.com and the New York State Veterinary Medical Society (NYSVMS) staff@nysvms.org unanimously rejected the ACC’s request.

According to the article, the ACC continues to lobby for that special exemption and the NYSAVT promised to keep “an eye on the progress of the situation…”.

We urge the NYSAVT as well as the BVOM and the NYSVMS to do more than just keep an eye on the situation.

We ask them to open a formal investigation into the quality of veterinary care at the ACC.

We refer these them to first hand reports posted in our NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND  as well as the “INCOMPETENCE RUNNING RAMPANT AT NYACC” series on Urgent Part 2′s Facebook/Notes page.  These reports document the neglect, incompetence, and veterinary malpractice at the ACC.  (To date no rescue group has filed a malpractice complaint, fearing the ACC will bar them from rescuing ACC animals.)

These reports are just the tip of the iceberg.

We urge the BOVM et al. to investigate the ACC’s continued violation of State law by allowing UNcertified employees to euthanize shelter animals.

Or why the ACC has a 100% URI infection rate among ACC animals.

Or why far too many spay/neuter operations are botched.

Or why far too many animals die in their cages while medical staff ignores their suffering.

Or why animals with broken limbs often go untreated for days.

Or why the ACC’s medical staff often administers the wrong dose (or none at all) of antibiotics or painkillers.

Or why the ACC hasn’t had a Medical Director on staff since April 2010.

We hope such an investigation will prove to be a “Walter Reed Hospital” moment for the ACC. (In 2007 The Washington Post ran an investigative series prompted by reports of unsatisfactory conditions and mismanagement at Walter Reed, which was then our Nation’s pre-eminent hospital for wounded soldiers.) The government ultimately closed down Walter Reed.

Similarly, the ACC should be shut down and a new organization allowed to rise from its ashes.

But any new shelter system must be managed by individuals who are both competent and committed to the care of our City’s homeless animals.  Our City’s shelter system should not continue to be an ignored stepchild of the Department of Health — a City agency which is not concerned with the “care” of homeless animals, but to protect people from animals.

Even though the DOH has always grossly underfunded the ACC, that’s no excuse for ACC Management to allow veterinary malpractice to occur and then proceed to coverup the malpractice.

It’s time to bid goodbye to the DOH’s disastrous control over the ACC and for a change in shelter leadership.

____

Footnote:  The DOH has savagely underfunded the ACC from the get-go.  However, should ACC Management’s response have been to use unskilled, low-paid employees to perform key medical services?   Why didn’t ACC Management demand that the DOH provide proper funding so it could hire licensed professionals? 

In mid-June 2011, the ASPCA and the Mayor’s Alliance – seeing the ACC spiral into crisis –struck a deal with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to give the ACC some extra money. It’s noteworthy that neither the DOH nor ACC management requested extra money. In fact, the DOH was ready to keep cutting the ACC’s budget and ACC Management was willing to accept those cuts.

Sources tell us that ACC Management has recently used some of the new money to hire full time veterinarians.  (For the past two years, the ACC had only 2 fulltime vets on staff … to care for 40,000 animals.)  We haven’t been able to confirm how many fulltime vets the ACC has hired and what their qualifications are.

Also unknown is whether the ACC has hired vet technicians and if so, how many.