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| - Our experience with Animal Emergency Clinic West would have been 4 or 5 stars if I was just reviewing the moment up until we told them we wanted to take our cat home to transfer to another vet. Once that happened, it appeared no one cared about professionalism or customer service (except one wonderful nurse).
When we dropped our cat off on a Saturday night, they were great. The wait was long, but that was to be expected. The receptionist went over the cost of the emergency consult ($82) before we even went back. Our boy had a urethral blockage and they admitted him after going over the charges and taking a deposit of over $1000. Which was fine - they explained what all of the charges would be for (mostly just the cost of hospitalization) and overall I believe they took excellent care of him.
We were able to call and get an update on him each day, and they called us to discuss his care and get authorization for more charges when he needed to be hospitalized and monitored for a few more days. Throughout this process we appreciated that they were upfront about all charges and costs, and they let us know before they did anything that would add any costs to our bill.
When he re-blocked, they started talking about surgery (at about $3500-$4000) and I called around to other local vets in the area to check about the surgery. Turns out you can get the surgery done for $800-$1200 at a non-specialty vet clinic. Animal Emergency Clinic West called us Wednesday morning to let us know that our cat would probably need the surgery and made an appointment for us to come in and talk to the surgeon the same day.
Meanwhile, a vet had called me from his home on Tuesday night to talk thoroughly about the procedure, and I came away feeling that he would be the right vet for us to get this surgery done if we needed it. He spent half an hour of his time on the phone with me telling me all the pros, cons, and his advice.
We came back to Animal Emergency Clinic West and the receptionist said that we would close out our bill this far, since the surgery center was billed separately. I settled the remaining $600+ in authorized charges and we waited. We told her that we would likely be picking up our cat to take him home or to another vet.
We met with the surgeon who did indeed recommend the surgery, and we told him that we would opt to take our cat home for a second opinion. He spent a few minutes vaguely trying to scare us into getting it done there, talking about how a regular vet COULD do it, but there might be complications that he personally had never experienced in the hundreds of times he had done the surgery. I should mention as well that the surgeon didn't even know if our cat still had a catheter in, and left the room to check. When he came back, he told us that our cat had actually emptied his bladder completely in the hour since he was last checked. One more reason to take him home since he no longer had a threatening blockage.
We waited at the front desk for them to bring our cat back out, and the receptionist said "That'll be $74." We asked why there was another charge and it was a consult for talking to the surgeon. Remember - up until this day they had always told us of any charges before we did something that would cost money, and all she told us initially was that surgery services were billed separately. She did not tell us that we were going to be billed - and if we had known, we would have just gotten our cat without talking to the surgeon since we already decided to take him to this other vet. When we said we weren't aware there would be a charge, she just responded "Well you didn't ask" in a rude and condescending tone.
We will not be back. Enjoy our $1700.
PS. The nurse staff was excellent, and the doctors do care about your pet. This clinic would be great for an emergency but if your pet is stable enough to transfer to your normal vet during normal hours, I'd switch them. Just maybe don't tell the staff, so they might continue treating you with basic decency.
PPS. The nurse who brought our cat out and said he was beautiful and had been a wonderful patient all week - thank you, it means a lot that you treasured our boy while he was away from home.
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