The new ARISE Veterinary Center has opened in Queen Creek, bringing pet owners round-the-clock emergency medical services in a sparkling, new 33,000-square-foot, state of the art critical care hospital and specialty clinic on the southeast corner of Rittenhouse and Ellsworth roads.
“We’re calling it our flagship hospital,” said Marketing Manager Nicole Martin. “We’re excited to be part of the Queen Creek community and really provide patient care.”
Half of the two-story building’s first floor is dedicated to emergency care, including an advanced 128-slice computed tomography machine, ultrasound, endoscope and radiography equipment.
And on the other is a top-tier MRI machine, a ventilator, and advanced life-saving technology. There are 34 exam rooms and five dedicated surgery suites.
“The design, the thought behind it – all of it. It’s exciting because it was really just a dirt lot,” Martin said.
“It’s going to be for dog and cat patients only,” said Martin, adding that “ARISE” stands for Arizona Regional, Intensive Care, Specialty & Emergency.
It is the first multi-specialty hospital in Arizona built from the ground up by National Veterinary Associates, a private, for-profit company that describes itself as “a leading global veterinary community of more than 1,400 veterinary hospitals and pet resorts united in the love of animals and the people who love them.”
The pet business has become big business as adoptions have risen and people are investing in their dogs and cats like never before.
“Americans spent $124-billion on their pets last year alone, and about a third of that was on veterinary care,” said Dr. David Haworth, a veterinarian who founded Vidium Animal Health, which has developed a cancer test for dogs and is associated with the Translational Genomic Institute in Phoenix.
“Many families are willing to spend whatever it takes to get the best care for their pets and clinics like ARISE provide a level of care just not available at general practices,” he said.
There are 22 specialties recognized by the American Veterinary Medical Association an 10 of them will be treated by veterinarians at ARISE, including cardiology, neurology, ophthalmology, internal medicine, and oncology.
“You wouldn’t want to take a human family member to a family practitioner for abdominal surgery, and many pet parents don’t want general practitioners to perform surgery on their pet when they have the option of a specialist,” Haworth said.
This makes ARISE better positioned to treat sick dogs and cats that need special medical attention, and able do so much more effectively than the family veterinarian, who can avoid spending thousands of dollars on specialty equipment that they would rarely use.
“They can send those pets with complicated conditions to specialists, so they can be efficient with their time, skill level and equipment needs,” Haworth said. “Emergency and specialty practices are really the wave of the future, just like they were in human medicine several decades ago.”
Moreover, getting treatment can be faster at ARISE than at many veterinarian offices.
Martin said, however, that ARISE is not trying to replace the family vet, but work with them.
“If you have a preferred family vet, we want you to call them first because you have built a relationship with them,” she said.
“If they are not available and can’t see you, or booked up for two weeks, and can’t see you, or it’s an urgent care situation, you can bring your pet to ARISE.”
The dogs and cats are referred to as “patients,” the veterinary doctors as “providers” and the exam rooms as “surgical suites,” not terms that have historically been associated with neighborhood vet clinics.
“We definitely used Mayo as our inspiration as to how we wanted this hospital to be built and our culture is very similar to Mayo culture,” said ARISE Medical
Director and Chief Veterinarian Dr.
Brandi Mattison.
“At Mayo Hospital, the central factor is always the patient, and how can the different specialties and disciplines come together to consult for that one patient
if they are needing the experience of multiple specialties, and we wanted that all to be available in one hospital,” Mattison said.
The ARISE clinic also has been designed to take the needs of the veterinarians into account, too.
A recent report in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association said “more than three decades of data shows that veterinarians are up
to 3.5 times more likely to die by
suicide than members of the general population.”
The report cites the specific conditions that specialty providers at ARISE will likely encounter at work.
“Vets who worked in clinical positions and specialized in treating small and companion animals, such as dogs and cats, had especially high rates of suicide, perhaps in part due to the emotional demands involved in that line of work,” the report read.
Mattison said ARISE had the dire statistics and the veterinarians themselves in mind during the design phase for the clinic.
“In an effort to really aid us to take care of ourselves in order to provide patient care, we really wanted the environment to be one that was compatible and had areas of being able to remove yourself from stress for a little while,” he said.
“We have a ton of windows and we have patios that are dedicated to our staff,” Mattison said.
“We have the capabilities to really provide a high level of medical care for pets,” Martin said.
Information: arisevetcenter.com