A Washington, D.C., veterinary hospital that employs 43 doctors will more than double in size when an 8,000-square-foot addition opens in 2015. Friendship Hospital for Animals, accredited by the American Animal Hospital Association, is adding a second floor and enlarging its 6,000-square-foot first floor. Seven exam rooms and three surgical suites are being constructed to help with a caseload of more than 60,000 patient visits a year. The first phase is scheduled for completion in late winter and the final piece by springtime. Friendship, which opened in 1936 and occupied its current building in 1960, offers primary care, specialty services and around-the-clock emergency medicine. The hospital bills itself as the only veterinary facility in Washington to employ full-time, board-certified specialists in surgery, critical care, internal medicine, radiology, oncology, neurology and clinical pathology. The hospital director, Peter S. Glassman, DVM, who launched the practice management system VetInsite in 2000, said the time was right for an expansion. “With 43 veterinarians and a total team of 176 operating under such physical constraints, Friendship was simply running out of the ability to provide the quality of care which our clients demanded,” Dr. Glassman said. “Doubling the size of our facility permits a more comfortable environment for patients and clients while also providing a best in class workspace for team members.” Friendship will be able to attract more pet owners from outside the District of Columbia. “Expanded services will allow local Washingtonians and metropolitan pet owners in Maryland and Virginia access to specialty care, such as MRI and CT scans, previously only available in the suburbs,” he said.
