Why should you use County Line for your veterinary Doctors?   How do you decide about any doctor?  There are a multitude to criteria which come into play.  Location, fees, skill, availability, compassion and most importantly, your ability to relate and communicate with that doctor.  Nearly everyone knows that doctors are not "cookie cutter" images of each other.  We're all very different in not only our skill levels and experience, but our basic values and motivations.

Lets talk about fees first.  These days, at some veterinary hospitals, the actual "walk out the door" fees are difficult to determine in advance.  The complexion of our profession has changed dramtically in the last 20 years.  I can't say years ago that all veterinarians were were hard working, honest, highly ethical people, but almost all of them were.  I was extremely proud just to be able to say that I was a veterinarian.  I knew that to everybody, it was automatically assumed that I was a person of high standards and character.  Things have changed, though.  There are people in our profession who are driven primarily by money.  The veterinary profession has been invaded by the big corporate veterinary hospital chains.  Like a bunch of veterinary Wall Marts.  Advertising, which used to be an ethical "No-No" in our profession, is now common place.  These big outfits have enough money to advertise aggressively and often offer the "lost-leader", a cheap vaccination, for example, to get you in the door.  If you look at your receipt when you walk out the door of one of these places,  you shouldn't be surprised if you paid more than you would have just about any place else.  They have very creative and not very straight forward or understandable fee structures.  They might advertise a $10.00 Rabies shot, for example, but because of hidden and/or additional fees, 'administrative charge', 'computer fee', office call, etc. your bill quickly climbs to fourty, fifty, sixty dollars.  But think about it.  They have to charge more.  Their overhead is higher.  Bigger fancier buildings located on prime real estate,  larger staffs, big advertising budgets not to mention a big corporate office with highly paid executives who travel the country.  These executives don't actually generate money, they oversee the money somebody else generates.  It isn't possible that they can charge less.  Not only do they have to get more yield per client, they must have more people through the door.  The only assured way for this to happen is if they advertise that they charge less.  The reality is, that the basic cost of doing business is about the same for all of us.  You can really only save significant money by employing younger doctors, who will work for less because they lack experience, and/or skill.  Other than that, in the scheme of a million dollar budget, you're pretty much talking about savings in pennies.  Drugs and equipment pretty much cost us all about the same.

As far as overhead goes, here at County Line Animal Hospital, our overhead is as high or higher than any other animal hospital.  That is because we are committed to having the latest diagnostic equipment.  We want the latest equipment because it allows us to do the best work.  Additionally our lab is backed up by an outside quality assurance program to ensure that our laboratory always gets the correct results.

Good questions to ask prospective veterinary doctors to get an idea if they are really as committed to their clients and their pets as their statements seem to indicate are: 1. Who does the lab work? [Outside lab = slow results]  2. If it is in-house, what is the education and experience qualifications of the people who operate the machines and peer into the microscope? [Lab techs are not 'cookie-cutter' copies of one another, either], and 3.  Do they use any sort of independent regular comprehensive outside quality control service .  That is a very big item.  Consistently accurate lab results require constant diligence and precision.  You can only know if you are doing good if some independent person checks your work.)  It is obvious to anyone we could make a lot more profit if we weren't constantly investing in new equipment and going back to learn new techniques and procedures.  Profit is important to us, but being the best at what we do is the primary goal.

Should you use one of more of the doctors at County Line Animal Hospital?  Without doubt.  We're the best.  But, certainly not if you're looking for the highest priced veterinarian and certainly not if you're looking for the lowest priced veterinarian.  If you're looking for price as your primary criteria we're likely not the doctors you're going to be happy with.  If you're looking for skill, if you're looking for value, if you're to be treated fairly and you want to discover if one or more of us has that very important rapore with you, then YES, you should make us the doctors for your pets.  We'd like you come and be our friends.  What you're going to find here at County Line are doctors who will listen, doctors who are smart and doctors who have there own pets and understand what it is like to have one get sick.