Austin Vet Care @ Central Park

Reviews 3

CA

Carrie Patrick

Ive had about 10 visits in the past month to this office with the same dog - she was attacked and suffered multiple lacerations that needed emergency care. The first go-round, they insisted on packing, repacking, and repacking her wounds more than 5 times. I finally took her to our regular vet to get a second opinion out of concern this was the best treatment option for her wounds. They shared my concern - her skin was beginning to break down due to being constantly covered and wet, and while the wounds were large, they felt they would heal best with a few staples and exposure to the air to "breathe" and dry out. They were right! She healed up beautifully, and the staples were removed after 4 days. Fast forward 2 weeks to now. She suffered another attack over the weekend and had several more wounds that needed immediate care. The clinc did provide excellent care during her 24-hour stay. She was sutured and several drains were installed in her larger wounds and she was bandaged again. I was instructed it was very important to bring her back if the bandages were seeping through and appeared to be saturated. When I woke at 5am to check on her, the bandages were soaked through and were slipping off, leaving 3 of the drains visible and oozing. I drove her in right away and upon arrival (to an empty waiting room with no cars in the parking lot), I was told it would be at least a couple hours before anyone could see her, so they asked me to leave her with them. I said she was due for her pain meds at 7am, so to please give them to her and charge me for them, as I had not brought them with, not expecting for the visit to take more than 2 hours. At 10:30am I called as I had not yet heard anything. I was told nothing had yet been done and it would be until at least lunchtime until anyone could see her. I told them I would come to pick her up and schedule her follow-up care at our regular vet, as its now Monday morning and their offices are open. Upon arriving to get my dog, I inquired to see if her pain meds had been given as I instructed. It took several calls to the back staff to get someone to come talk to me, and the tech said, "Well I arrived at 6:30am and havent given her anything and we tried calling the vet that was on staff overnight but shes not answering her phone so we dont really know... but my guess is probably not because no one made any notes about it." I am positively LIVID. She had been sitting in their office for six hours with several bleeding drains exposed and completely saturated bandages only two days after a painful attack and was now four hours past the required time to be given pain medication. She had not eaten breakfast, had not been taken out to use the bathroom, and Im sure was feeling awful. Over the past month, weve experienced literally dozens of miscommunications from the staff at this clinic about her care, about discharge instructions, about who I even am when I show up after theyve seen me for 5 days in a row at the same time for my appointment! I think the vets are good at their job but the techs and office staff are positively horrible. It was difficult to receive clear answers to almost every question we asked, and this last incident is egregious enough I felt the need to say something. Sadly, if you need emergent care after regular hours, this clinic is only one of two options in all of Austin. I do not recommend them for any follow-up or non-urgent care... if you need a great regular vet, give Corner Vet on Cesar Chavez a try... they have been amazing, smart, helpful, responsive and caring during every visit for all 5 of our dogs.

A

A Private User

My past 2 experiences with this animal hospital are not only sub-par, but they were awful. The first time I took my kitten Koga (which I recently received from an animal shelter) for a primary exam. After waiting about 90 minutes before they even let us into the room (I was the only person there too by the way), they let us wait another 45 minutes. After the long wait a nurse came in (who was fairly rude to us) and took diagnostics and said the doctor would be in shortly to see him. We then got to wait another 45 minutes before the doctor came in and looked in his ears, looked at his teeth, and told us he was perfectly healthy after about 3 minutes. He then said the nurse would be back to finish. After another 15 minutes the nurse came in, and did nothing besides saying we could check out. Three days later Koga started getting the sniffles so we took him to a different vet (The Austin Vet Care up north), and we were nice and surprised to find out within 1 hour of getting there that our poor kitten had sniffles, a bad case of ear mites, and worms.. and he had these when we went to the other vet. If that alone is not enough to keep you away... which it wasnt for me when my other cat Luna had an emergency... then this will be: Our cat Luna ended up getting a bad abrasion on her eye, and we took her to the only vet we knew was open at that time (it was night) which happened to be this one. We called ahead to see which doctors were working (to make sure it wasnt the same male one which missed the ear mites and worms), and he was not working at the time. We thought we might be safe, but we werent. Again after a long wait with only one other person there and 2 doctors working at the time, we left with a large bill, antibiotics, eyedrops, and a revisit scheduled for two days later. When we return two days later, after a long wait we received a large bill, antibiotics, eyedrops, and a revisit for two days later again... AND OUR CAT WAS NOT GETTING BETTER. After the third visit I was very upset.. because after a long wait in the waiting room, the doctor came out and said that there was nothing they could do and wed have to take her to an eye specialist. They then said they would only charge $50 for this visit! I decided Id pay the bill, and just let everyone know what sort of scam artists these people are. We paid these people over $400 for them to tell us they couldnt do anything, and because they waited so long to refer us to a specialist Luna might lose her eye. After the referral we went to the specialist (who immediately took her off half the meds because he said they were horrible for her eye and were most likely making it worse), and the eye doctor was able to help her for less than $200 (which included two visits, meds, and surgery!). I made the horribly stupid mistake of going there, and going there more than once. If you value your pets health, your pocketbook, and your sanity... stay away.. these people are not there to help you or your pet. They just want your money.

JE

Jeff Bruning

BEWARE this place is overpriced and will try to take advantage of your situation by use of scare tactics and trying force a quick decision! Our son brought our cat in on new years day (he recently went to live with him when he got his own apartment) because he noticed he was not acting like himself. They examined the cat and determined there was a urinary obstruction and crystals in his urine. They then tell him he has 2 options, a $3500 surgery or they need to put him down for close to $500. They kept pushing him for a decision and going on about how much pain the cat was in and told him they had to do something soon because the cat was in so much pain and he would not make it another 24 hours. This was of course not something he could afford to pay and they had him so worked up he called his Mother crying. Having seen cats with this issue before and knowing what they were trying to charge him was close to 10 times what a reasonable vet would charge I told him not to authorize any other action and that I was coming to pick up the cat. Jumping right to this cat needs surgery or needs to be put down did not seem right and I wanted a second opinion from his normal vet. I arrived to pick up the cat and instead of having him ready to go I was taken to a room so the vet could talk to me. As expected they tried their tactics on me, I was told the cat was in pain and now they upped their timetable and were telling me the cat would not even make it to the next morning to see his regular vet. When I did not give in I was told that I was basically commiting animal cruelty and would need to sign some forms saying that I was proceeding against the vets recommendations. Though they were told to do nothing else I knew I was lucky to get out of there for $208.94 ($109 for an emergency exam/consultation plus $51.86 because they had already started an IV, and $48.08 for 0.3 units of buprenex-pain medication). Of course, as we knew he would, our cat made it to the next morning and to his normal vet where we were told that he indeed did have an obstruction that needs to be cleared and that they would keep him in their care for a couple days until he was urinating normally and that we were looking at roughly$350. With the blockage cleared and special food he should be OK. I would say thats quite a difference. I dont know, maybe these vets are shaking people down so they can buy those Ferraris next door, but something isnt right there and I would think twice about trusting them with your animals. Also for others who have already left reviews here about bad experiences please consider sharing your review on Google reviews as well if you havent done so already. ***Check out yelp for a better idea as I suspect the validity of some of these reviews***