This place is nothing but frustration, incompetence blanket excused by "hurr, pAnDeMiC", and poor communication. The vets are probably halfway decent, if you can get past the cognitive challenges of the front-office staff.
I first scheduled an exam for a new cat here at the end of October. I chose a vet a short drive away because my cat panics and is very uncomfortable during car rides. I had to book almost two months in advance, and took the first appointment offered. The appointment was for 2:30 p.m. on a Friday.
I arrived a little before 2:30 and followed their no-contact pandemic instructions: call them, let them know you're there, they'll come get your pet. They came out at 3:30. Yep, an hour late, and my poor kitty was whimpering and miserable. Sat in the car for another hour waiting to get him back. I had ample time to watch walk-in appointments who arrived after me get taken in for immediate service, so I think the lifehack there is "don't bother to make an appointment, just walk in and claim your pet is "sick," and they might have more respect for your time.
Around 4, the vet called me, said they'd finished the exam, taken blood and urine, and said she was just going to check his ears. I had a Zoom meeting at 4:30, (which I figured would be perfectly safe, because who's ever at the vet for two hours just for a routine exam?) and didn't make it back home until the meeting was over.
At 4:30, two hours after my exam appointment, they brought out my cat, with a bottle of prescription ear medicine and a bill. Blood stained the fur down the entire back of his leg, and the bandage they'd slapped on his leg was already coming off. No explanation of what the vet found during the ear exam, just a $54 bottle of Rx ear drops. I'd followed all the check-in instructions on the website, including bringing a stool sample. They did nothing with the stool sample, despite it being required for a new cat exam, per their website. They'd asked me for prior vet contact information, which I gave them. They told me they'd call Tuesday with lab results.
Tuesday came and went; no call. I finally called Thursday. They said the vet would call me back. She finally did EOD Friday, a week after the exam. No specific results, just that his kidneys "aren't in the best shape" and his hyperthyroid meds needed adjustment. I asked for specific results to be emailed. Never happened. They send a helluva lot of spam trying to sell me stuff, but no numbers on his kidneys, no numbers on anything. And they never did anything with the stool sample or the prior vet.
Cut to last Thursday, I called my pharmacy to refill the hyperthyroid meds. They called Cascade to renew, because I'd run out of refills. Cascade sat on the renewal for two days, doing nothing. The world's dimmest receptionist or tech called me that Saturday to ask for the prior vet information again, claiming that they never got it. I gave her the old vet's name again. She hung up. Then she must've remembered that she'd originally called to tell me I needed to make an appointment to have my cat's bloodwork done to get the refill, so she called again a couple of hours later. She kept repeating everything I said back to me like she was developmentally delayed. I told her I'd make an appointment, but I cannot and will not tolerate the hour-long wait past my appointment time. I can't afford to burn two hours of my workday (and have my poor, sweet-natured cat sit uncomfortably in the car for that long) for an appointment to draw blood. She gave me a very long-winded, slow, canned speech about how tEh pAnDeMiC basically excuses them from the most basic standards of competence and effective schedule management. I am done hearing this garbage. She whined at me not to interrupt her as she dribbled out this bullsh!+ as slowly as speech can be delivered. I made the appointment just so I could get the refill (I'm never going back to Cascade) and hung up as she repeated the appointment confirmation to me super-slowly a 2nd time. I was beyond done with her.
Now that the refill is ready, Imma say a bit about leaning on "b-b-buh COVID" as an excuse for everything from half-assed blood draws, to cruel indifference to a travel-stressed 13-year-old cat's comfort, to a complete cock-up of schedule management, to a smug, passive-aggressive disregard for the value of your clients' time. It's been TWO YEARS. Get your s#!+ together. COVID is no longer a valid excuse for your incompetence and indifference, and I ain't accepting it. Stop taking new patients if you can't schedule them properly and respect their time. No one should EVER be waiting more than 15 minutes past their scheduled appointment, and if they are, it's a sign that YOU are mismanaging your caseloads. It's not COVID, its YOU. read more