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Our tables rating individual firms will be more valuable to you if you know how the data were gathered and how they should be interpreted.
We regularly survey area CHECKBOOK and Consumer Reports subscribers for their feedback on services they have used. For our survey on veterinarians, we asked consumers to rate their experiences with veterinary practices they had most recently used "inferior," "adequate," or "superior" on several aspects of service, including "listening to/communicating with you," "arranging to see you quickly," "being easy to reach by phone," "giving helpful advice by phone," "keeping down office waiting time," "maintaining a pleasant office and staff," "giving prevention/self-help advice," "helping keep pet's medical costs down," "spending enough time with you," "apparent competence/thoroughness," and "overall care and advice." Our ratings tables show the percent of each practice's surveyed customers who rated it "superior" (as opposed to "adequate" or "inferior") on each question.
We have included on our ratings tables all of the veterinary practices for which we received at least 10 ratings on our customer survey. If a practice is not listed on our ratings tables, it simply means we did not receive at least 10 ratings for it; that fact has no negative or positive implications.
Since many practices were rated by rather small numbers of raters, small differences between two firms in the percentage of raters who gave a particular rating (say, "superior") should be ignored. The table below gives a rough guide to minimum differences you should look for in deciding on one firm over another.
When using these survey data, remember that the questions are to some degree subjective and that the differences among firms might be explained by differences in the personalities, backgrounds, critical standards, and other characteristics of the raters or by biases these raters might have.
Information reported on our ratings tables regarding the types of animals each practice cares for came directly from the practices during telephone interviews with staff. We then followed up with a mailed verification form asking the practice to verify the information we collected, and we have made changes where the practices indicated that corrections were needed.
To compare prices, our shoppers made a number of calls to each of the veterinary practices evaluated for our most recent, published report and, without revealing their affiliation with CHECKBOOK, obtained prices for six different procedures, such as spaying a six-and-one-half-month-old cat and cleaning the teeth of a five-year-old, 65-pound dog.
We used the prices we collected for each firm to calculate its price index score, reported on our ratings tables. Unless otherwise noted, the index is based on at least three price quotes given by a firm.
To compute our price index scores, we calculated an average price for each procedure for all the practices that quoted on that procedure. Next we compared each practice's price to the average. One practice might come in at 120 percent of the multi-practice average for a particular procedure, and another practice might come in at 90 percent. We took each practice's percentage score on each procedure, standardized it, and assigned a weight to each procedure, based on our judgment. We then averaged the standardized, weighted percentage scores to find how the practice compared to other practices overall. Finally, we multiplied this overall percentage score by $100.
The price index score, then, is intended to indicate the relative prices we found for the practices, adjusted to the base of this flat dollar amount. These index scores are imperfect for various reasons: for instance, the procedures checked may not be representative; the weighting of various procedures in the index may not accurately reflect typical expenditure patterns; and the number of procedures is small.
All of the data must be interpreted in view of timeliness. Our customer survey data are from surveys conducted from December 2004 to April 2011. Survey respondents were asked to report on experiences in the preceding year. The data from our survey of firms were collected from December 2007 to March 2008. Our price data were collected from May to November 2007.
Our ratings tables include veterinary practices for which we collected 10 or more ratings on our customer survey during the customer survey period mentioned above, but we do not report data for periods prior to firms' changes of name and ownership. As a result, some large practices are not listed at all. If only name or ownership changed, we do report the data. Changes subsequent to the dates listed above may not be taken into account.
We give checkmarks to firms that score highest on a scoring system that we devise for each service field. Our scoring systems weight the various data in our tables and text based on our subjective judgment of their importance. Since the scores are based entirely on information presented, you can apply your own subjective judgments, and decide whether you prefer firms we have not given checkmarks. Where we do not have important data on a firm, we cannot give our checkmark.
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