HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — About a year ago, veterinarian Melissa Ezell started noticing subtle changes at the midsized animal clinic in Huntsville, Alabama, where she works.
She said she and other vets were feeling pressure from management to make a certain amount of money from every appointment. If a pet owner wasn’t going to spend enough, the message from management was to offer more services. She was urged to pack in more patients outside of normal business hours.
“Before, I never felt any pressure to be making a certain amount of money in a day,” Ezell, who started working at the clinic in 2021, told Stateline. “It was just, ‘Fill your schedule, practice good medicine, everything else will come.’”
The clinic is owned by National Veterinary Associates, one of the largest veterinary chains in the nation. In 2020 the company was acquired by JAB Consumer Partners, a global private equity firm based in Luxembourg. By early 2023, Ezell said, she felt a shift in atmosphere at the clinic and a greater focus on increasing profits.
Private equity’s foray into the human health care industry in recent years has drawn public outrage and legislative scrutiny as firms have been blamed for increasing prices, slashing services and shuttering hospitals to maximize shareholder profits.
Now, some veterinarians and advocates are sounding the alarm that private equity’s entry into the pet health care industry could lead to similar results.
Some states already have laws that prohibit non-veterinarians from owning veterinary practices, and some consumer advocates want states to review large-scale acquisitions in the industry.
“A large number of these funds are seeing veterinary medicine as a good profit center,” said Dr. Grant Jacobson, an Iowa veterinarian who serves on the board of the Independent Veterinary Practitioners Association. He said he’s seen corporate-owned chains in his region drive up prices for…
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