Animal hospital completes £2.5m extension

Animal hospital, North Downs Specialist Referrals, has completed a £2.5m extension to its Surrey headquarters as it aims to bolster its treatment offering. The architect-designed addition houses a new diagnostic imaging suite complete with cutting edge technology including state of the art CT and MRI scanners. The newly-opened extension has also allowed North Downs, which is part of the Linnaeus Group, to add a fourth operating theatre, two more consulting rooms, an additional ward for dogs and an expanded office for clinicians. The extension and expansion has prompted North Downs to recruit five more clinicians to help staff the new facilities and deliver the improved, expanded service. Two specialise in small animal surgery, one in neurology, one in ophthalmology and one in anaesthesia. North Downs hospital director Terry Emmerson said: “This significant investment illustrates our commitment to providing the highest standards of medical and surgical care for our pets in a caring, compassionate environment. It has provided us with a number of important new facilities, allowing us to continue to build on our services and our level of care. “The new diagnostic imaging suite combines separate MRI and CT rooms offering a new Toshiba 1.5T MRI scanner and a hi-tech CT scanner operated from a combined central control room. These state-of-the-art machines allow us to rapidly acquire highly detailed images to help pinpoint problems and plan treatments and surgery all under one roof." He added: “The new operating theatre means we have four in total, which increases our capacity for handling surgical cases. We also now have an additional dog ward and, as with our other wards, this is climate controlled, designed with hygiene in mind and has multiple oxygen access points. “The expansion has also helped us add two more consulting rooms to help make appointments and examinations even more efficient, while we have created a dedicated phone answering room to help improve our client service by having separate client care staff answering phones while others are welcoming clients to the hospital."