Help AHNA Help Homeless People and Their Pets

Animal Hospital of North Asheville is participating in Project Connect for the Homeless. Project Connect is an annual one day event that is held to provide onsite barrier-free services to the homeless population of Asheville-Buncombe while facilitating community awareness and participation. AHNA will be on hand to provide what care we can to the pets that belong to homeless people.

Would you like to help? You can donate dog and cat food!

Please bring donations to AHNA. We will be collecting donations of dog and cat food through September 9th. September 9, 2010 will be our last day to collect!

For more information on Project Connect, CLICK HERE

Jill joins our Client Care Team - a team with combined experience at AHNA of 88 years!

Cathy, April, Kalon, Lynne, Norma, and Sheri want you to know that they have a fantastic addition to the Client Care Team. You may already have seen her smiling face if you have entered through our cat door in the last few weeks. Her name is Jill and she has fit right in with our competent, intelligent, warm and friendly team at our front desk.  Jill loves animals (of course!) especially her own darling Westie, named Riley Wallace, and her cute bunny, named Bailey. Jill is a graduate of both North Buncombe High and the University of Tennessee and lives in Weaverville with her husband, Jared. When she isn’t at work she still loves helping animals, and she enjoys painting, hiking, spending time with her family, as well as decorating and fixing up her house.  Please welcome her to our team when you see her!

Jill has joined six other team members with an average of almost 15 years each at Animal Hospital of North Asheville. We hope Jill will be here a long time, too! With so much experience, each person has the ability to perform any task needed, but each one has an assigned role each day such as scheduling appointments, facilitating client communications with the veterinarians, and answering questions on the phone (Lynne, Sheri, and April most days), greeting you and processing your information both as you enter and leave (Norma, Kalon and Jill most days). When not helping clients, they do so much to try to make AHNA and your experiences here special. Cathy, who supervises the team, may be seen in many different places on any given day and also plans and coordinates the team and education meetings that occur on Tuesdays. Yes, each team member is smart, capable, and careful, but what really makes them special is that each one really does care about each and every person and pet.

It is common for family members to arrive home from work and suddenly find that their pet needs veterinary care. For this reason, Animal Hospital of North Asheville has offered late afternoon and evening hours for over 15 years. For the convenience of our working families, we also offer wellness appointments during the evening. At Animal Hospital of North Asheville, we are truly dedicated to your pet’s well-being and comfort.

One way we show this is by having a veterinarian(s) and staff available at a moment’s notice to provide emergency care to your pet. Many veterinary hospitals have periods during the day that a veterinarian is not onsite, but we are here to give life saving care more hours per week than any other general veterinary hospital in this area. We are open during the week from 8:00 AM until 8:30 each night and from 8:00AM until noon on Saturday. Additionally, we have a veterinarian and staff ready at 4:00 on Saturday afternoon and 4:00 on Sunday afternoon to treat patients presented for unexpected problems that the family does not think should wait until Monday. These afternoon weekend hours are for established patients only and there is an after hours fee to help compensate for the weekend expenses involved in providing this care. Our veterinarians and staff devote cherished weekend time to this duty in order to allow your pet to be treated in a familiar atmosphere by people who know your pet and have your pet’s complete medical record. For patients admitted to the hospital during the week, our 24 hour nursing care allows our patients to avoid being left unattended in a veterinary hospital or having to travel to an emergency hospital for nursing care during the night.

Please note: Though very rare, there are times that we cannot open at 4:00 on Saturday or Sunday due to computer or other maintenance needs, please call to be certain we are open before you arrive.

New Addition to AHNA Family

Dr. Dennis Golden - Internal Medicine Specialist

Animal Hospital of North Asheville is excited to announce that the dogs and cats of Western North Carolina now have the first Internal Medicine Specialist available to them in a general practice! If your pet is already a patient of Animal Hospital of North Asheville, it means that another level of expertise has been added to the team of veterinarians that care for and about your pet. Our doctors collaborate on cases, so your pet gets the benefit of the collective knowledge and skills of all our veterinarians. Dennis Golden, DVM, Diplomate, ACVIM comes to us with vast experience and years and years of training. His presence means that your pet can now receive the highest level of care here at our hospital where we already know and love your pet, without having to travel and at the lower cost of a general practice. Please read Dr. Dennis Golden’s bio below:

Dennis L. Golden, DVM, Diplomate, ACVIM (Small Animal Internal Medicine)

Dr. Golden received his DVM degree from the University of Florida in 1981. After graduation, he practiced for 3 years as an Associate Veterinarian in a general small animal practice in Tallahassee, FL. Subsequently, he participated in a residency training program in Small Animal Internal Medicine at the University of Tennessee which was completed in 1987. After residency training, he joined the faculty at Mississippi State University as an Assistant Professor and, during that time, completed board certification in the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. From 1990-1996, Dr. Golden served as an assistant professor of small animal internal medicine at Auburn University.  Additional academic appointments included Associate Professor of Medicine at Tuskegee University School of Veterinary Medicine from 1997-2000, Clinical Associate Professor of Small Animal Medicine at Auburn University from 2001-2009, and Clinical Associate Professor of Small Animal Internal Medicine at Tuskegee University School of Veterinary Medicine form 2009-2010. Dr. Golden has served as a committee member in numerous professional associations including chairman of the Small Animal Internal Medicine Residency Training Committee for the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and a member of the Alabama State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners. In addition, he is a member of the American Veterinary Medical Association. His current professional interests include gastroenterology, diagnostic and interventional endoscopy, and diagnostic ultrasonography. Dr. Golden’s hobbies include woodworking, hiking, and flat water canoeing. His pets are a Golden Retriever named “Chester”, a Collie named “Mason” and 3 cats “Milo”, “Bandit” and “ Toot”.

Electronic Medical Records

Animal Hospital of North Asheville has been computerized since 1981 when we were the first multi-user, multi-tasking veterinary practice in the US, and we have had complete electronic medical records since 2004.

Electronic Medical Records

Our patients benefit from electronic medical records because these records provide a very complete, legible, and orderly record with history, plan and treatment that can easily be sent out by email for immediate consultations with specialists. Also, any doctor in our practice can easily take over a case when the primary doctor has to be out of the office and there is no change in the level of care when a case is transferred. When new patients join us, their records are scanned into our system so that all previous history is available. Additionally, there is never the problem of a misplaced paper record and your pet’s picture is always present on the record, which further eliminates any chance of confusion.

Animal Hospital of North Asheville has 40 computer workstations where a patient’s medical record can be viewed simultaneously. Our doctors can also use their computers at home to sign into our system. Some examples of how having a large number of work stations helps to provide better, more efficient care:

• The lab can be working on your pet’s test results while the doctor is still with you in the exam room
• The ward nurse can send information about a hospitalized patient to the doctors while they are at their desks
• A doctor can check a patient’s record from home to be sure that things are going smoothly.

Darlene is packing up the files.

Our lab equipment, our reference lab and our radiographs all integrate into our electronic medical records. Our Eklin digital x-ray and our telemedicine capabilities allow Board Certified radiologists at various universities and locations to read x-rays whenever needed. Additionally, AHNA has RAID5 protection (five redundant hard drives) in our servers so your pet’s medical record is constantly stored and updated off-site. This means that in the case of a fire or natural disaster, your pet’s medical record will not be damaged.

At AHNA, we want to provide the best care for your pet with our electronic medical record system, but we are also proud that by being a paperless practice we are able to help the environment and provide care more affordably for you due to the efficiency that the records provide our staff!