<<<<<< Do to the COVID-19 outbreak we Now have special hours from 8-12 Monday through Friday >>>>>>

Until further notice,our operating schedule will consistently be as follows:
Monday – Friday, from 8am until 12pm. We are maintaining these abbreviated hours for urgent medical situations ONLY. We are not offering lobby service at this time, so call in advance so that we can assist you over the phone. We will continue to reschedule all nonessential appointments as efficiently as we can.

If you have an after hours emergency, contact Saint Francis Vet Specialist and Emergency at 404-924-2000. or contact Blue Pearl 404-649-6333.

Dear OAH Family,
We wanted to express our appreciation for your patience, support, and adaptability during this strange and scary time. We know this is very stressful for everyone, and we thank you for “hanging in there” and working with us.  We also wanted to give you some insight into how we’ve made these decisions and why they are important for our community.

We realize that many animal hospitals are open full hours and letting clients into the building while disinfecting to the best of their ability. What we know about viral activity and spread led us to make our drastic decision to limit hours, patient visits, and client entry to our environment. We do not take this lightly and know this creates difficulty for many.

Firstly, we want you to imagine your sneeze, cough, or breath particles as glitter. Anyone who has ever tried to clean glitter off any surface knows that it’s nearly impossible to get rid of it all, as there are ALWAYS residual particles. We have learned from leading infectious disease expert Dr. Tony Fauci that the primary cause for the spread of COVID-19 is through droplets or aerosolization, which means that viral particles hang in the air long after we have sneezed, coughed, or sprayed fluid into the air just by speaking (say it don’t spray it:)).  The virus can then be spread inadvertently to someone entering that area soon after. We have also learned from Dr. Fauci that the virus can live on steel and plastic surfaces for several hours; surfaces that cover most of our hospital and the tools we use. While we sanitize those surfaces of our facility to the best of our ability, we cannot ensure the area is completely safe and feel it would be irresponsible and inconsiderate to our families, clients, and community to open the doors like “business as usual”.  By keeping an environment that we cannot fully control closed and limiting our appointments to sick and injured patients only, we are doing our part in “flattening the curve”.

To further protect one another, our clients, and our community in addition to our condensed office hours, a few members of our staff have voluntarily taken a leave from work to shelter in place at home. This was a very hard decision financially for them, but a couple are immune compromised and one of them has an elderly family member in her home with a chronic lung illness who would not survive infection with COVID-19.  But don’t worry, even though they have been cooped up for weeks, they are safe, healthy, and the rest of the hospital team is helping them out. And our group text messaging is off the chain!

In accordance with recommendations made by the AVMA, we are not performing nonemergency/nonessential surgeries in an extreme effort to save use of our sterile gloves, gowns, masks, and other protective equipment in order to donate to human medical facilities when needed. We are on call for such an opportunity to help our fellow medical professionals, and when we receive that call, please know that we are prepared to make a delivery of 100% of those supplies at any hour. Because of your cooperation and understanding, by extension, you too are making this donation with us.

We tell you this because we want you to understand how much we appreciate your support. We have heard people say that the mortality rate is only a “small percentage” of our population. Well, we believe in looking at human life as unique. These are people’s loved ones that we are, as a community, making sacrifices to protect, and this means exponentially more than any business’ bottom line, including ours. Thank you so much, from the bottom of our hearts for your kindness, compassion, support, understanding, and willingness to work with us as a team to do our part to help stop the spread of this terrible virus that we are actively learning about day by day. We will get through this together and come out of the other side stronger and confident that we did the right thing.

With Gratitude and Much Love,
The Ormewood Animal Hospital Team