Pros
Veterinary staff are generally competent and work very hard to do their best. Patient care is very good despite managements lack of support of front-line workers. BluePearl pays their bills and does make payroll every two weeks. That's the best I can say about them
Cons
Pays staff poorly and resists giving raises. Staff in our hospital have not had any sort of raise for more than a year, and management has not made any commitment to raises in the future. Whats more raises in the past have never covered the increased cost of living in the area. Consequently in the high employment economy of the Seattle area we are loosing staff constantly. The constant turn over and need to retrain people puts further strain on staff morale which is already poor. Without good staff I cannot practice good medicine. BluePearl bought our former practice 5 yeas ago. At that time we were forward looking, stressing constant improvement of our medicine and elevating our staff's skills as well. Our reputation in the community was excellent both among pet owners and referring veterinarians. This attracted employees to us. Since that time our reputation has declined and we have become a "Big Box" specialty center known more for it's high prices and spotty client care than for the quality of its medicine. One small example of many illustrating BluePearl's commitment to profits over practice: When MARS( the parent corporation of BlueePearl) purchased VCA we were told explicitly that we would not have to exclusively use VCA's laboratory services (ANTECH). We have a local lab that provides excellent lab services with far superior customer care, quicker turn around and cheaper prices. One year after the merger we were told we could no longer use the superior lab but had to use ANTECH. We had to start charging customers higher prices for poorer service so MARS could make more money.
