Should a vet practice have a separate emergency page?
Short answer
Yes, and in the United Kingdom it is closer to an obligation than a choice. RCVS guidance requires practices to make full details of their 24-hour emergency cover publicly available, via the practice website or other public means, including telephone numbers, location details, when the service runs, its nature, and the likely initial costs.
Key points
RCVS supporting guidance, updated 8 October 2024, states that all veterinary surgeons in practice must take steps to provide 24-hour emergency first aid and pain relief.
Vets are not obliged to provide that cover personally, but must ensure clients are directed to another appropriate service when they are off duty.
Practices should provide clients with full details of their 24-hour emergency cover and ensure the information is publicly available, either via the practice website or by other public means.
That information must include relevant telephone numbers, location details, when the out-of-hours service is available, the nature of the service provided, and the likely initial costs of the service.
Practices that outsource their 24-hour cover must still ensure clients are given full information about it and that the information is publicly available.
The information should be given at the outset of the professional relationship, with regular reminders as appropriate.
Google's own hours fields separate regular hours, an open 24 hours setting per day, and a More hours field for services running to different times from the main business.
What are the two searches actually asking?
One is a decision and the other is not. Somebody choosing a regular vet is comparing practices over days, reading about the team, checking whether you see rabbits, and looking at fees. They will come back to the site more than once and they are not in a hurry.
The other person has a dog that has eaten something at eleven at night. They are not comparing anybody. They want a phone number that will be answered, an address they can drive to, confirmation that someone is there now, and some idea of what walking through the door will cost. Everything else on your website is noise to them.
A single page cannot serve both, because the emergency reader needs the answer above the fold and the routine reader needs the depth underneath it. Putting the emergency number at the top of every page is not the fix either, because it tells the routine visitor they have landed somewhere urgent.
Why is the emergency page not optional in the UK?
Because the regulator has effectively specified it. RCVS supporting guidance, updated on 8 October 2024, sets out that all veterinary surgeons in practice must take steps to provide 24-hour emergency first aid and pain relief. That much is well known in the profession.
Less well known is what the same guidance says about publishing it. Practices should provide their clients with full details of their 24-hour emergency cover provision and ensure this information is publicly available, either via the practice website or by other public means. The guidance names clear statements on the practice website among the methods.
Read plainly, the UK regulator expects the out-of-hours arrangement to be on your website and findable. That is not a marketing recommendation that competes with other priorities. It is a professional obligation that happens to also be the page your most urgent visitors are searching for.
What must that information contain?
The guidance is unusually specific, which makes it a straightforward page to build correctly.
The relevant telephone numbers.
Location details, which matters most when the out-of-hours service is at a different address from the practice.
When the out-of-hours service is available.
The nature of the service provided, so a client knows whether they are getting first aid and pain relief or a full hospital.
The likely initial costs of the service, which is the element most practices leave off and the one an owner at midnight most wants.
What if you outsource your out-of-hours cover?
Most practices do, and the guidance addresses it directly: those who outsource their 24-hour emergency cover should ensure that their clients are given full information about the service and that this information is publicly available. Outsourcing moves the work, not the duty to tell people.
It also creates the honesty problem that shows up on profiles constantly. A practice that refers overnight cases to a dedicated emergency clinic ten kilometres away is not a 24-hour vet, and a listing that implies otherwise sends a distressed owner to a locked door. The accurate version is more useful anyway, because it gives the owner the address they actually need.
What you may call the practice is a separate question with its own rules, and hospital in particular is a protected word in several markets. We have set that out in whether you can call your practice an animal hospital.
How should the Business Profile handle it?
With the hours fields rather than the description, because a search filtered to open now reads the hours and not your prose. Google separates three things here.
Regular hours are the baseline. If the practice genuinely staffs overnight, the day can be set to open 24 hours. More hours is a separate field for a service that runs to different times from the main business, which is where a distinct emergency window belongs. We went through the same mechanics, including the rule that special hours only cover a closure of up to six days, in the guide on seasonal demand.
If the out-of-hours provider is a different business at a different address, it has its own profile and its own hours. Your job is to point clearly at it, not to absorb its availability into your listing.
What does the routine page need instead?
Everything the emergency page deliberately leaves out. Who the vets are and what they are interested in, which species and which procedures you take, what a first consultation costs, how long you have been in the area, and what happens when a case needs referral.
This is the page that gets read three times over a fortnight while somebody decides. It can afford length, and it benefits from the things an emergency page cannot carry: the team, the history, the reasons a nervous owner would choose you over the practice two streets away.
How do the two pages differ?
Emergency page
Routine care page
Reader's state
Distressed, deciding in seconds
Comparing over days
First thing on the page
Phone number and whether anyone is there now
Who you are and what you treat
Cost
Likely initial cost, because RCVS names it
Consultation fees and what is included
Location
Where to drive to, which may not be your address
Your address and parking
Length
Short, above the fold
Long, read more than once
Status in the UK
Required to be publicly available by RCVS guidance
Ordinary marketing page
Related questions
Does the RCVS requirement apply outside the UK?
No. It is UK guidance from the UK regulator, updated 8 October 2024. Other markets set their own obligations and some set none. The practical case for an emergency page holds everywhere, because the search happens everywhere, but only in the UK can we point at a regulator that expects the information to be published.
We refer overnight cases elsewhere. Can we still say 24 hour?
Not in a way that implies you are open. What the guidance asks for is full information about the arrangement, publicly available, including the other provider's numbers, location, hours and the nature of the service. That is both more accurate and more useful to an owner at midnight than a 24-hour badge on your own listing.
Should the emergency number go on every page?
In the header or footer, yes, as a small persistent line. What does not work is leading every page with it, because the visitor who is calmly choosing a vet reads that as a practice defined by crises. Give it a home of its own and a quiet link from everywhere else.
Do we really have to publish likely costs?
RCVS names the likely initial costs of the service among the information that should be provided. A range with a plain explanation of what it covers satisfies that and prevents the call that starts with sticker shock. It is also the single most searched thing about emergency veterinary care.
Should the out-of-hours provider have its own listing?
If it is a separate business at a separate address, it will already have one, and that is correct. Each location gets one profile representing that location. Your practice profile should carry your hours honestly and your website should route people to the provider clearly.