Corporate Takeover of Veterinary Clinics

Dr. Marty Greer joins host Laura Reeves for a very current conversation about corporate takeover of veterinary clinics.

“The trend to purchase veterinary clinics has been going on for probably about 12 to 15 years,” Greer said. “It started with just a couple of consolidators. It’s now up to about 80 and some of the consolidators have consolidated. So we now see some of these groups recapitalizing and then moving on and being sold to another consolidator.

“So it’s been kind of interesting to watch and frankly pretty scary. Just before COVID, the prices of veterinary clinics were at an all -time high, and then it dropped during COVID.

“They tell you that they will give your staff better benefits, and they probably do. They tell you we will unload all that stuff off of you that you don’t want to deal with. The HR, the purchasing, all the back-office stuff that you as a veterinarian didn’t go to vet school for, didn’t learn in vet school, don’t want to learn, don’t want to know, don’t want to deal with.

“They’ll say we’re gonna lift all this off your shoulders, you can just practice medicine, it’s gonna be awesome. And if you’re a large producer in the practice, the owner or one of the bigger producers, they want you to stay for two years.

“It has different impacts in different practices. The practices that we’ve really watched the most closely personally are the practices that have done a lot of reproductive services in our community, either in our immediate area or across the country because these are colleagues of ours.

“And that to me has been really hard to watch because a lot of the practices have not continued to thrive after the sale of the practice.”

Marty and Laura continue with a conversation about how breeders can work with the larger community to help change the conversation about dog breeding that trickles down to the people who become veterinarians.