Got an email from our local vet today announcing that she was retiring, and selling the practice to another independent veterinarian, having turned down several much higher offers from private equity rollup funds.
I am so grateful to Burbank/Toluca Pet Hospital's Dr Skaar for this. Having watched PE-backed rollups destroy so many veterinary practices, killing pets and ruining workers' lives, it's such a relief to know that our vet put her patients first.
@pluralistic I note that in the UK ophthalmologists and dentists are being rolled up by PE, even if GP surgeries and hospitals *so far* are mostly safe. (Another Tory government would change that, fast.)
@pluralistic
That's awesome!
I just last week became aware of how many vets are now owned by Mars Inc alone. (2000+) As well as dog food companies, many of the major brands like pedigree and royal canine. :(
Once I found this out I looked into my vet having been suspicious recently of the high costs and nickel and diming us as of lately. Sure enough I find its part of a nationwide group of vets probably wrapped up in private equity. I haven't dug that deep yet.
@justin @pluralistic I used to maintain the website for their fish care division, which was a pretty well-known brand in the States (that happened to be extremely local to me) which they gobbles up. Big-fish style, I suppose?
@pluralistic My sister is a vet, and from what I have heard from her the big corps seem dedicated to buying everything up, and working for them is hell. They are doing to veterinary medicine what they did to human medicine. Nothing they will not suck dry.
@MrAptronym @pluralistic They've already bought up most of the private practices in our rural Arizona location. This has been going on for years now. There's only one full-service clinic in the area left, that's still privately owned. Corporate buy-out, followed by enshitification.
@pluralistic The vet hospital we used with our late dog went into PE. We now have a puppy, and we are very disappointed in the service they provide. We've decided to find a different independent vet instead. It's so sad because the place had everything, and the vets were amazing.
We’ve experienced the same in the UK 😡
Our vet practice, which we’ve used since 1993, sold to a large conglomerate a couple of years ago and, since then, our bills have rocketed and the standard of care has slumped.
Unnecessary procedures have been “suggested” which we have the knowledge and experience to respectfully decline, but I imagine that others will have a beloved companion animal euthanised because of the unaffordable expense of “recommended” investigations/treatment 😡
@pluralistic Well good for Dr. Skaar, a person with ethics and integrity, for sure. That's one reason I've not picked up a new pet. Those private equity firms have destroyed the veterinary industry.
@pluralistic My mother inherited the practice from her father. Turned down many offers from PE over the years leading up to her retirement. Did the same thing and sold for less than she would have otherwise received from PE by selling to a trusted younger vet that already worked for her and was happy to have the opportunity.
@pluralistic I was wondering if a directory of independent practices existed, and this looks like a decent starting place (it appears to be a directory of directories.)
@cwicseolfor@zeroes.ca @pluralistic@mamot.fr Looking at the map for our area, it's depressing how few entries are marked. VCA has bought up most of the practices that were independent when we first moved here. VCA has definitely bad news for local pet owners.
@ferricoxide @pluralistic @cwicseolfor
VCA is a cancer on the vet industry. Our former vet sold out to VCA when he retired and chucked the whole practice under a steamroller. Couldn't keep good vets, many unneeded diagnostic tests and suddenly we couldn't get regular meds, just the new "house brand". We found a new practice after they couldn't diagnose a flea infestation.
The new one is independent, but under the same crushing need to have cash flow.
@markwoll@universeodon.com @pluralistic@mamot.fr @cwicseolfor@zeroes.ca
Yeah. When we moved into our house (fall of 2002), there was a very good, independent vet less than 1mi from our house. I had a pair of Bengals when we first moved in, so, that's where I started taking them (and the dogs that we adopted in the years following). It was a great practice …until they got acquired by VCA in 2016 (or maybe 2015). The other than adding the VCA logo to their signage, the changes weren't immediately noticeable. Then we lost a dog to kidney failure in early 2017. When I reviewed her bloodwork from the previous two years' physicals, I saw that there were abnormal numbers for her kidney labs. The vets overseeing her care had apparently not noticed them, at the time, presumably because, since the VCA acquisition, they didn't have enough time to pay attention to the details.
During that 2015-2017 period, they'd also had a high turnover among their treating personnel and their prices spiked. But, due the location, and the fact that being our "regular" vet, we got discounted access to their emergency-hours services. So, we'd just sucked it up. However, we didn't change practices until 2019 when they discontinued the 24hr emergency-service part of the practice. At that point, we had no compelling reason to pay the premium plus the bloodwork-gaff that preceded the 2017 loss of our one dog made me say, "yeah, fuck these guys" and change practices.
Was only recently that I found out that the new practice is also PE-owned. My criteria for selection of a new vet had merely been "not VCA-owned" (and not BanField, et. al.). The new practice wasn't slathered with "chain" logos and appeared to only be a local practice-group (at the time of our switch, they only had two locations). The only reason I found out that our "new" veterinary practice is PE owned is I was speaking with their practice-manager about recent changes to their prescription policies. It was in explaining to her why we'd changed practices that she revealed "for the sake of transparency" that they, too, were PE-owned (thankfully nont VCA). So, yeah, they're on a very short leash, now.
@ferricoxide @pluralistic As below, it may be that the directory listed for your state uses a voluntary professional association, in which case your local vets would likely need to join (and pay dues to) that association in order to be listed as part of their map. They may not feel that's worthwhile for their practice, or may not even know it exists. Either way, talking to them about it might be a good idea, they may form their own such associations or organizations locally.
@pluralistic Our vets set up their own practice after the clinic they worked at was taken over by a PE backed owner. Of course we followed them, and continue to get better, lower cost care.
@CAWguy @pluralistic
Our vet did the same and she now does house calls. I am torn between wanting her to clop horses in leading a pageant wagon thst unfolds to a vets office or for her van to have “Confuse-A-Cat” emblem on the side
But I am very grateful for her reliable expertise and ongoing service.
@pluralistic I took a sick cat to one of these private equity vets once.
When I saw the lobby I knew I was in for it, and sure enough....
They use all the same tricks to inflate bills that you're familiar with from human medicine.
You can't drive around town bargain hunting with a sick pet, but I did a little research and knew where the cheap/honest/locally-run vet was next time.
Gouging pet owners is one of the lowest forms of PE crap out there.
Everyone has some kind of limit on what they can pay for their furry family member's care, even if they haven't though it through. It sucks that someone might hit that point and think it's time to say goodbye, when a traditional vet across town might charge half as much.
@pluralistic I'm so envious. Our local vet prices are extortionate now after PE ruined it. We needed to have some relatively minor treatment for our dog last year. I did the math and it would have been cheaper to fly first class to a Midwest city, stay at a 4-star hotel, have the work done, and come home than to pay the local vet.
No doubt about it, PE is literally killing pets. Everyone wants to do right by their furry friends, but when you get a quote for $10K, you start to weigh options.
@tek @pluralistic
JFC, i didn't even know that was a thing. Instead of getting affordable healthcare for people, we are getting more expensive healthcare for our pets. This crap is getting out of hand. Totally absurd. I'm glad my local vet is still in business.
@Ambulocetus @pluralistic It's a thing, and I'm not exaggerating the amounts, either. We were literally quoted a price of approximately 10,000 USD for an urgent procedure, but one drastically, vastly less complex or resource-intensive than, say, having a bunion on a human foot fixed.
Vets perform important services and they've gotta make a living. I don't begrudge them that. And yet, some of the prices we've been given are ruinous, in the "guess we're saying goodbye then" range.
@tek @pluralistic
Shoot, I don't have 10,000 to spend on my own health. I'd do anything for my dog, I even almost died rescuing a dog who fell through the ice, but if they told me I needed 10K, I'd have to bring him home to die in my arms.
I'm really starting to hate this shit.
