Today I Learned

NVA (national veterinary associates) is another firm that gobbles up private practices. I worked in their IT department as support for a few years. Spoke to dozens of veterinary offices daily throughout the continental US and AK.

It seemed corporate's interest was to keep things running with little expenditures.

Then they started to focus on new acquisitions. They were bringing in so many new offices there was a backlog getting their IT systems joined into the corporate network with proper backups.

Then there was the hack (2019). Affected offices had their databases encrypted so they were unable to access any pets records. Here is an article about it - https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/11/ransomware-bites-400-veterinary-hospitals/

I left days after that occurred. Couldn't take actively lying to offices saying their records would be available soon knowing the records would take at least a week to recover. The newly acquired offices lost everything. Offices told me pets would die.

I have 2 veterinarians in the family and both sold their practices to private investors. These private companies are buying up pet services as it's one of the last places people pay medical bills without insurance. Pet insurance is also skyrocketing in popularity.

Hedge funds took our pets and created a lucrative industry exploiting our human need to care for others. Monetizing love is the most evil thing I can imagine and it is now a multi-billion dollar market.

VCA is the walmart/amazon/google, etc of the veterinary world. My **** told me they had to do battle with them in *****. Fortunately for them, they were sitting on valuable real estate and were very popular with their neighbors. My ****'s husband wasn't as fortunate in *****. VCA forced him out of business.

(Names edited to protect the innocent.)

They also own Banfield. Talk about dystopian.

I mean, I'm not trying to argue the dystopian part, though I do wonder why this specifically is what makes you think it is dystopian.

Mars has been making pet foods for over thirty years. Branching into pet care isn't a huge stretch.

And like... I like both chocolate candies and pets. If I started a company that made both chocolates and cared for pets, why is that aspect dystopian?

Does chocolate contain cat parts?

I am lucky enough to have a local vet that is excellent and caring and independently owned. When the owner wanted to retire a few years ago, several of the veterinarians pooled together to purchase it, so it wasn't bought by a big company. My cat died earlier this year, but I will continue to donate to them even though I don't have a pet right now.

All that being said, I've known two people who've worked at the VCA, and both are excellent. One (a vet tech) is still there and loves it and her manager is great, but the other left because she was overworked and underpaid (an actual veterinarian). In an ideal world, huge conglomerates wouldn't buy out and jack up the prices of independent vets and then cut costs by stressing staff, but that doesn't mean that the people working there aren't caring and dedicated. Depends a lot on the specific location.

I very well may live in a bubble, but this is actually the first time I've heard of them, are they really that widespread?

I can think of about a half-dozen independent veterinarians off the top of my head within maybe about 20 minutes of me

We do have a handful of Banfield and Blue Pearl locations around, which now that I'm looking into it also seem to be owned by Mars, which is wild

But even still, they're still dwarfed by the number of independent vets.