The Veterinary profession is no longer just about animals and the people who love them. It’s also about spreadsheets, EBITDA margins, and multi-year investment cycles. Over the past 15 to 20 years, private equity and venture capital have flooded into the Veterinary space, acquiring and building hospitals at a rapid pace. Some groups have made remarkable strides: expanding access to care, investing in cutting-edge technology, and creating professional pathways improving the industry. Others have disappeared as quickly as they arrived, leaving behind confused clients, disenchanted doctors, and abandoned hospital teams.
I’ve enjoyed a robust career and have worked in almost every role of a general practice — assistant, technician, clinician, and executive. I have seen firsthand what sets successful hospitals apart, regardless of ownership structure. It simply comes down to three fundamentals: transparency, empathy, and shared goals. These aren’t buzzwords. Taken seriously, these operational values determine the outcome of entire organizations.How, then, do we bring them to life? More importantly, how do we hold ourselves accountable?
Transparency: The Cornerstone of Trust
Veterinary teams run on trust. Clients entrust us with their beloved pets, and team members rely on each other to deliver consistent, compassionate care. For leaders, whether on-site or in distant headquarters, to earn this trust, transparency is non-negotiable. It can’t be lip service, regardless of how uncomfortable it may be. Instead, it must be embraced as a fundamental business practice. That means being transparent about what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what’s coming up next.
All too often, changes to pricing, staffing, or schedules are dropped on clinical teams without enough warning. Understandably, this top-down communication breeds resentment and chips away at team culture. When we as leaders ask people to adapt without context or enough notice, we’re not asking for flexibility—we’re asking for blind faith. That approach isn’t leadership; it’s a set-up. We’re not the ones who must face clients in the exam room and justify why a test that cost $215 two weeks ago is $315 today.
Let’s be clear: transparency doesn’t mean overloading your team with spreadsheets. It means engaging team members in decision-making processes, explaining the rationale behind decisions, and providing ample time for adaptation. Respecting the intelligence and emotional investment of your staff earns their trust—even in the face of hard change.
Transparency is not just an issue for practice leaders and clinical teams—it must permeate every level of the organization. A disconnect between investors and executives, characterized by unmet promises, expectation mismatches, and withheld information, can derail an organization. You can’t build trust when your middleman (often the CEO or CVO) is misinformed, makes well-intentioned promises, and then has to walk them back. Transparency between those financing operations and those managing day-to-day activities is absolutely vital to a healthy culture and successful organization.
Empathy: A Two-Way Street
While the burnout crisis among clinical teams is well-documented, there is a less discussed but equally important need for upward empathy. Because if you’ve ever sat in a boardroom defending clinical priorities to a finance-first investor group, you know how lonely that seat can be. Here’s the hot take: I think clinical teams need to develop more empathy for their administrative and executive teams.
Yes, you read that right. It almost sounds laughable. How dare I suggest clinical staff be empathetic towards executives? I am very aware of the perception of executives ‘working hard’ for their team: sitting behind desks in a comfy chair, attending meetings all day, taking home six figures without doing any of the ‘real work’ of Veterinary medicine. Meanwhile, doctors and technicians are the ones having to apologize to clients for the rising costs while trying to ignore the smell of whatever patient fluid got on their scrubs. It’s natural to have empathy for clients struggling to afford pet care or clinical teams putting in long, stressful days. It’s hard to have empathy for a CEO who says they are ‘doing everything they can.’
What the clinical teams don’t see is the HR director who spent 60 hours researching, talking, negotiating a better healthcare option that would expand mental healthcare for an entire company, and then fought (and lost) a budget war scrapping all of that work. They aren’t in the boardroom where their leaders advocate for their needs and priorities and aren’t able to get approval for the things they know will help. They don’t see the late nights and emotional turmoil that their leadership team is put through when forced to make cutbacks when financial goals aren’t met and budgets get tighter. And I say these things because I experienced them.
I know it’s easy for clinical teams to assume that executives and investors don’t care, that they only care about the bottom line. In my experience, there are more well-intentioned leaders and investors in Veterinary medicine than those who prioritize profits over patients. And for those that truly have nothing in this industry driving them other than financial results, do us all a favor and please leave.
To build trust and foster empathy, we must see each other as human first, and as doctors, CEOs, and investors second. We must all seek first to understand and lead with curiosity before criticism. Starting with transparency and then seeking true understanding allows empathy to grow and create thriving organizations.
More Than Cogs: Connecting Individual Roles to Organizational Success
Veterinary teams are among the most dedicated and driven people I’ve ever met. When provided with clear, attainable objectives such as daily revenue targets, surgical caseloads, or dental suite utilization, they demonstrate remarkable initiative and problem-solving capabilities. However, they need to know what they’re chasing, and why it matters. Without the why, clinical teams can easily start to feel like just another cog in the machine. Understanding creates alignment. Aligned organizations build momentum. That’s when we see real results.
For an organization, or a single practice, to achieve success, it’s essential that everyone knows what success means. Not just the big overall goal (revenue target, new client numbers, memberships enrolled), but how their daily tasks fit into making that happen. For example, a clinic in the early months often focuses on customer acquisition. Consequently, the investors are looking at cash flow, margins, and client acquisition costs; the managers are reviewing availability, accepted versus declined bookings, and labor costs; and the clinical teams are being asked to push reviews, referrals, and social media likes, subscriptions, and follows. It can feel monotonous and even stupid to be trying to practice medicine and build relationships while also having to emphasize reviews, referrals, and social media. However, understanding how those actions drive more new customers, increase revenue, lower customer acquisition costs, increase margins, and therefore speeds up the timeline to profitability, the work feels less like being a cog in a machine and more like contributing to a shared team mission.
When goals are unclear, ever-changing, or unrealistic, the entire organization falters. Vague directives, constantly shifting KPIs, and erratic business priorities create confusion and kill morale. A leadership team with a clear budget, aligned goals with investors, defined targets for success, and stable metrics, the team can often MacGyver their way to results, no matter the constraints. When investors, executives, and clinicians are aligned, the entire operation clicks: CSRs schedule smarter, techs work more efficiently, and doctors see clear paths to success.
A Better Path Forward
Private investment in Veterinary medicine isn’t going away—and that’s not inherently a bad thing. We need capital, scale, and operational innovations to meet rising demand. In fact, for the first time, many of the changes we as veterinarians have long hoped for—better compensation for technicians and CSRs, more sustainable work hours, robust mental health benefits—are finally on the table.
However, we won’t realize that promise if we treat each other like adversaries.
Transparency, empathy, and shared goals aren’t soft skills. They’re the backbone of a successful Veterinary organization. These values build alignment, trust, and resilience. They’re what turn a group of employees into a team—and a clinic network into a community.
None of us chose a career in Veterinary medicine because we wanted to make money. We chose this because it is our calling. We are healers, we are helpers, we are teachers, we speak for those who cannot speak, we care for those who cannot care for themselves. Let’s not lose sight of that, no matter who’s signing the checks.
References:
- American Veterinary Medical Association. “Market Trends: Private Equity’s Impact on Veterinary Practices.” AVMA, 2023.
- Noonan, K. “How Private Equity Is Reshaping Veterinary Care.” The New York Times, April 2023.
- Mars Veterinary Health. “The Value of Clear Communication in Veterinary Teams.” Internal Industry Report, 2022.
- NAVC. “Veterinary Compensation and Workforce Study.” North American Veterinary Community, 2023.
- Veterinary Business Journal. “Mental Health Benefits and Industry Expectations Post-Consolidation.” 2022.
- Veterinary Information Network (VIN). “Burnout and Turnover: Current Data from the Field.” 2023.
- Bain & Company. “Veterinary Services Market Overview.” Industry Report, 2022.
- Gallup. “Building a Culture of Trust in the Workplace.” Workplace Insights Report, 2021.