I know, I know. I’m bound to get a nastygram from someone in West Hartford for smearing the ‘good name’ of the CT Vet Center, but it doesn’t matter. In fact, bring it on! These people took me and Peter over the hurdles for $1150 for what should have been a $400-$500 job on poor baby-opossum-bitten Rusty, and people are going to hear all about it, here. Right now.
So. Here’s what happened. I’m out in Fargo, working my way through my last week of 12-hour days. Peter, he’s home but he’s going to school and teaching classes and bringing his mom to appointments and taking care of the cats and house, and, and, and.
He notices on Tuesday morning, that Rusty is kind of lethargic and in retrospect hasn’t been herself for about a day. She’s not really doing well by that night, choosing the quiet of the basement over human contact. He notices she’s favoring one of her now quite swollen front legs. He decides to take her into the vet, but it’s 9 at night. There are very few options available with 24-hour care, so he brings her to the Connecticut Veterinary Center Pet ER.
Granted, a 24-hour vet *should* charge more than our regular one for a visit at 9pm on a random Tuesday with no appointment. Where our vet charges $50 for an office visit, I’d be fine with paying $150 for the 24-hour availability. But I digress.
Her leg is clearly not broken as evidenced by her *not* going into attack mode when you move it. And it bends and flexes and she can put weight on it, even if she doesn’t seem to like to. Plus when the vet shaves her leg, they find two small bite marks. Now when Peter tells me all this afterward, I immediately know that this is the work of the baby opossum that we saw outside one night just before I left for North Dakota. But that’s hindsight. Continuing on…
Peter, bless his gentle heart — he just wants to make sure that Rusty doesn’t kick it when I am away, so he tells the vet to just make her better. The reason this is funny is because before I left, he told me that one of his biggest fears was that one of the cats would die while I was away and I’d be mad since it seems that nothing ever happens to them when I am home, despite my overly lenient treatment of los gatos.
So I think the vet, seeing the worry in Peter’s eyes and armed with this “do what it takes to make my kitty better” blank check, starts adding up all the stuff that they could *possibly* need to do to fix Rusty:
Anesthesia. Blood tests. Urine tests. X-Rays. Medications. Bandages. Several nights of ICU care. Drains. Rough worst case estimate, $1070. Of that, only $92 is the emergency office visit.
Yikes. But Peter, being the good pet owner, had them put the 75% hold on the credit card and told them to get to work.
A day later, the verdict comes back from the vet: Cellulitis, brought on by the bite. OK, that’s not so bad… it’s treatable, it’s not broken bones and in fact, according to the paper pusher that told Peter what the deal was we might not even go over the amount held on the credit card for her treatment.
Peter goes to visit Rusty on Wednesday night, and while she seems pissed off at having been left at the vet, she’s doing a little better:
They won’t let her leave because she’s still on IV antibiotics and fluids. There’s no mention of the treatment provided so far, otherwise.
A call the next day to the vet reveals that she has to stay yet another night, because she still has a fever. A few calls traded between Peter and the clinic that day (Thursday), with the unhelpful paper-pusher revealing that the bill will be coming to $1150!!!!
Peter tells me this as I am packing up my stuff to come home. My entire bonus for going out to Fargo, gone with a ‘possum bite. Rusty, you have just used up your lifetime health benefit with the Brent and Peter Kitty Health Plan.
So Peter goes and picks up Rusty on Friday before I flew in. In addition to a small bag of oral meds and a $1150 receipt for services “rendered,” Rusty also came home with a new cut on one of her ears and another just above her eye, as well as a nice sneezy cold and goopy eye. Fabulous.
What did the Connecticut Veterinary Center do to justify their paycheck? Now keep in mind, the worst case estimate was if her arm was broken. In reality… THEY PUT RUSTY UNDER… TWICE. THEY TESTED [a spayed cat] TO SEE IF SHE COULD ‘TAKE’ ANESTHESIA. THEY CATHETERIZED HER. THEY X-RAYED HER ARM A DAY AFTER SHE GOT THERE. THEY CHARGED $16 EACH FOR THOSE PRETTY PINK BANDAGES. They charged $70 more than the worst case estimate for medication. They kept her in what they call the cat ICU for two days. They also charged $70 for things like “ABSCESS.” Why would they need to charge for that? She came in with one already, she didn’t need another! And if it was to drain the abscess, where’s the charge for the drain? And why not say ‘drain abscess’ on the bill?
The stuff she did need – antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, blood and urine tests… that’s all fine, and incidentally come to just about what I expected to pay for her care at an emergency vet… about $500.
I don’t mind paying for good quality care. But damn, my cat should have had gold-tipped claws coming out of that place for what they charged. My local vet — they are practically fanatical about cat care, and I can tell you without a doubt that the total cost MIGHT have been as much as HALF what CT Vet Center charged because *my* vet wouldn’t do stupid sh*t like put my cat under twice for no apparent reason, nor would they x-ray when the leg is clearly not broken. And kitty ICU??? Please! Rusty wouldn’t have *additional* wounds if there was anything intensive about the care she got at the CT Vet Center. A fair and reasonable vet would have given a rundown of what was needed, would have kept the owner informed as to what was being done along the way, and would have *asked* the owner how far to go with treatment.
It’s taken me a week just to calm down enough about this issue to write cogently about it, and I am still seething. Getting information out of these people is like pulling teeth. And when I asked my vet about the charges, they did decline to ‘go against’ another vet, but did add that emergency care does cost more than normal office visit care. I accept that; like I said, if the office visit at night was $150, that’d be fine. But ALL of the other care my cat received was during normal business hours, and this place does do more than emergency care. There’s no excuse for it but admittedly, there’s nothing I can do to get my money back. What they say they did *could* have been part of *a* treatment. All I can do is try to inform everyone I can about this place’s seemingly deceptive practices and exorbitant prices.
If anyone has had experience with the CT Vet Center, good or bad, please feel free to comment here. I’d love to be wrong about this place, but from what I have heard informally from a few others, I think I am on the mark. I would love to see this place lose some business – they may have scammed me and Peter, but maybe my little rant here will encourage others to at least be vigilant about pinning these people down about what they charge when their pet needs emergency care.
Thanks for reading! Cheers, -B
