At the Animal Specialty Center in Yonkers, patients ”“ dogs and cats primarily, pigeons, canaries and domestic rats, too ”“ are seen largely by referral. About 2,000 veterinarians in the tri-state area refer clients and their companion animals to ASC since the startup business opened its doors at 9 Odell Plaza in January 2008.
Doctors at ASC said specialty veterinary practices have multiplied in recent years, with demand driven by aging baby boomers and their pet-centered, post-children households. Yet ACS still is a rare breed in the business. Its Cyberknife, a trademarked, robotic radiosurgery system used in the treatment of tumors, is $5-million evidence of that.
At ASC about 100 employees, including 24 veterinarians on staff, provide a range of health care services that include dermatology and allergy, cardiology, ophthalmology, oncology, dentistry, physical therapy and 24-hour emergency care. The center”™s veterinary acupuncturist, Dr. Richard Joseph, is its co-founder and a former neurologist at the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan, where many AMC vets trained and where Joseph for years was the only acupuncturist to animals in the city.
Joseph and his former AMC protégé in neurology, Dr. Jason Berg, started in business together in 2001 with a Manhattan company that brought mobile magnetic resonance imaging to veterinarians in Westchester, Long Island and New Jersey. They began looking for sites for a specialty center in lower Westchester that same year. Berg said the partners spent $15 million to open their 16,000-square-foot center on a two-acre site in the South Westchester Executive Park.
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Berg and other vets at the center dispelled a common notion that specialty clinics cater to the wealthy and their pampered-like-Leona-Helmsley”™s pets. “Most of our clients are middle class,” said Berg. “If they have a family, the pet is part of the family.”
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As baby boomers age and their children leave home, “Their animals have become second children,” said Dr. Sarah C. Charney, the center”™s radiation oncologist. She said she sees predominantly middle-class clients who are “willing to spend significant amounts of money on their pets.”
In the last 10 years, “There”™s been an explosion in veterinary specialty medical centers,” said Charney, who has dosed about 165 canine and feline tumors in the 18 months since the Yonkers center began operating the only veterinary Cyberknife machine in the world. “There”™s certainly been a change from an animal being an animal to an animal being a member of the family. That paradigm shift has occurred in the last 20 to 25 years.”
The noninvasive Cyberknife treatment, which uses digital imaging and proprietary software to plot and remotely direct precise radiation beams, costs $6,500. Charney said 80 percent of the clients with whom she consults already have decided to go ahead with the procedure.
Looking to incorporate a radiation unit in the building design and center”™s services, Joseph went online in search of a vendor. He found Cyberknife and its Sunnyvale, Calif.-based maker, Accuray Inc. “First hit,” said Joseph. “It was a lucky day.” The company had only seven machines left in the country, but was willing to hold one for the new center opening in Yonkers.
The radiation room, which Charney said typically costs about $1 million to build, requires four-foot-thick cement walls and vault-like doors. “There”™s more concrete in this room than there is in the whole foundation of this 16,000-square-foot building,” said Joseph. He stood beside the Cyberknife, a sleekly high-tech assemblage that resembles a large-headed, looming alien insect.
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The Cyberknife”™s robotic arm initially was designed for use on BMW”™s automotive assembly line. Used in the treatment of human cancers, radiosurgery systems such as the Cyberknife remain rare even in the metropolitan area. No hospitals or medical centers in Westchester provide radiosurgery; the nearest is in Stamford, Conn., according to Animal Specialty Center vets.
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“When we put ours in, there were only three (Cyberknife) machines in the tri-state area,” Charney said. Those are reserved for human patients. The Yonkers center operates the only veterinary Cyberknife in the world and one of only three radiosurgery systems for animals in the country.
“Generally it is as effective and sometimes more effective than doing general, conventional radiation,” said Charney, The Cyberknife”™s more accurately targeting beams produce fewer acute and long-term side effects. Unlike conventional radiation, radiosurgery treatments can be completed in one to three sessions. And bodily areas previously exposed to conventional radiation can be safely radiated again with the Cyberknife.
For the center”™s patient population, cancer is a disease of old age. Charney said half of dogs over the age of 10 will die of cancer. Radiosurgery can extend a pet”™s life.
“If we can buy them perhaps a year or a year and a half or two years, we”™ve bought them a significant chunk of time,” Charney said. “Most of the animals we treat, we expect to get somewhere between a year to two years. If we expect less than that, often the owner will not go forward.”
The radiation oncology service has brought clients from Chicago, Colorado, Florida and Virginia. Business from those visitors and their ailing companions prompted one nearby hotel in Yonkers to open a few pet-friendly rooms.
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For the animal center”™s overnight visitors, “We”™re very happy that Yonkers is becoming a tourist destination” with its downtown redevelopment efforts, Joseph said.
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Charney said the center felt tremors from the Wall Street crash last fall. “When that 401(k) went to that 201(k), people kind of held back a little bit” on specialty pet care. “Once that initial shock was over, I don”™t think we”™ve been hit as hard as some other industries.
“Certainly veterinary medicine as a whole has been a hit a lot” by the recession. General veterinary practitioners see “more people making a decision to euthanize” rather than pay for more treatment for their pets.
“But people who come to specialty medicine, they”™re going to get it done,” Charney said.
“Maybe it hasn”™t grown as much as it would have, but it certainly hasn”™t dropped significantly.”
