My wife and I were so upset with the treatment that our late cat Grania received at Boulevard Veterinary Clinic that we filed a formal complaint with the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. The unit that oversees veterinarians told us in a recent letter that an investigation had raised “certain concerns” about Boulevard.
Grania died this summer after Boulevard performed much more extensive surgery on her than it told us it would to remove a small growth on her shoulder.
Boulevard forgot to remove a tourniquet it clamped on Grania’s paw, misled us about whether its clinic is staffed overnight, said she needed a blood transfusion and then failed to give her one. Boulevard finally said we should take her to a veterinary hospital where she could get a transfusion, and it then lied to us by promising it would brief the facility where we took her. No one there had heard anything about Grania or us. Grania died shortly after we got her there.
The Attorney General’s State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners unfortunately declined to take any disciplinary action against Boulevard. It said it was prohibited by a confidentiality law from explaining why or showing us its investigation files.
However, the Board notified us that it did send correspondence to Boulevard “in which it discussed certain concerns raised during the Board’s investigation.” What were the concerns – the tourniquet left on Grania’s paw? The failure to fully inform us about what the surgery would entail? The misleading and lying to us? The Board wouldn’t say.
But if you have had a lousy experience with Boulevard Veterinary Clinic, we urge you to complain to the N.J. Attorney General’s State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners. It’s not hard, and maybe the more complaints that the Board gets, the more likely it will be to take serious action. You can find the details at www.state.nj.us/lps/ca/vetmed/
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