Erin Cochran has taken her dogs to what is now VCA Valley Vet Animal Hospital for almost 14 years. It sits less than a mile from her house in New Kensington, it was highly rated when she moved to the area, and the staff she has known for years are still there.
At some point, the practice was bought by VCA, one of the largest veterinary chains in the country.
“I can’t exactly pinpoint when it was bought out by VCA, but there’s just a difference in price,” she said. What she noticed was that lab work started costing more.
Chains and investor-backed companies have bought up neighborhood veterinary practices across the country, and industry analysts say most buyers keep the name on the sign and the people behind the desk.
While the names on practices may not be changing, the price of veterinary care has soared above most other industries. Between January 2015 and January 2025 prices for veterinarian services rose 64.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while overall consumer prices rose 35.9%.
VCA attributed rising costs to advances in the field and to pressures across the industry. Diagnostics, treatments and specialty care that did not exist a generation ago are helping pets live healthier lives, the company said in a written statement. Industry-wide pressures such as a national shortage of veterinary professionals and rising costs for medical supplies and equipment have also affected the cost of care, according to the statement. The company said it works to keep care accessible through wellness plans and financing options.
The gap accentuated in the last three years, as general inflation cooled and veterinary prices kept climbing. As ownership has consolidated, employees have gained in some areas and seen erosion in others, while effects on quality are debated.
Who owns Pittsburgh’s practices?
Nationally, about 30% of companion animal general practices are corporately owned and about 70% remain independent, according to estimates from Brakke Consulting, a firm that advises animal health companies and the investors who back them. Corporate ownership runs far heavier among specialty and emergency hospitals.
Private Equity Vet, a project of pet owners in California which tracks and maps the consolidation of practices nationwide, finds that of 62 practices in or very near Allegheny County, 41 are tied to private equity while 21 remain family owned.
Those owners are not all alike.
Some are strategic buyers like Mars Inc., the candy company that bought VCA for $9.1 billion in 2017. Mars acquired not only some 800 animal hospitals but controls:
- Antech Diagnostics, a national veterinary reference laboratory
- Sound, a veterinary imaging company
- The general practice chain Banfield
- Specialty and emergency network BluePearl
- Pet food brands including Royal Canin, Pedigree and Whiskas.
Others are investor-backed platforms assembled to buy practices, hold them and eventually sell them on, according to John Volk, a senior consultant at Brakke Consulting.
What draws them is scale. Volk, who tracks the market for the industry, said investors buy many practices at once because volume lets them purchase supplies more cheaply and run the business more systematically.
Seen through the vet’s scope
Angelina De Sanctis has been a veterinarian for nearly 20 years. Since 2018, she has run Vet At Home, a mobile practice which she operates with one nurse, examining animals in their owners’ living rooms.
De Sanctis has also worked as a relief veterinarian, filling shifts at hospitals — sometimes corporate-owned — that need temporary coverage. She said veterinarians are often measured on how many patients they see and how much revenue each visit generates, rather than on the quality of the care.
“It’s more of a business and an investment,” she said, than an enterprise run “to do well by animals.”
She has watched colleagues sell, usually to corporate buyers who can move fast and may buy several practices in an area at once. “There aren’t many individually owned practices anymore,” she said. “That’s a rarity.”
De Sanctis was approached a few years ago by a venture-backed mobile veterinary company expanding into the Pittsburgh market. There was no written offer, she said, just phone calls she did not return. Other area mobile veterinarians signed on. The company later shut down abruptly, and she said its former clients came to her afterward.
Volk maintains consolidation is a neutral transaction.
“The roll-up of veterinary practices by investors is not a new phenomenon in American business,” he said, listing banks, rental companies and waste management as examples of industries that have seen consolidation. “It’s a very common phenomenon where investors feel that by owning a lot of them, they can get some economies of scale.”
He also rejects the idea that profit motive is unique to corporate practices.
“Every veterinary practice, no matter who owns it, unless it’s a nonprofit, they’re all interested in profit,” he said. “Whether it’s owned by a financial firm or by an individual veterinarian, they’re all in it with the idea that they’re going to make a profit at the end of the year.”
Employees weigh freedom against security
The corporate-private choice has implications for practitioners as well as customers.
Lori Kogan, a professor of clinical sciences at Colorado State University, surveyed 896 full-time associate veterinarians for a study published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association in December 2023.
Veterinarians at corporate practices were about twice as likely to have health insurance, according to the survey, but they were also more likely to feel pushed. More than a third reported considerable or extreme pressure from management to generate revenue, against 13% at private practices. Asked where they would rather work if all else were equal, 55% chose private practice and 12% chose corporate. Even among those already working at corporate practices, 46% would rather be somewhere private.
Kogan’s survey had no findings on how private and corporate practices impact animal care.
Gigi Tsontos, CEO of Not One More Vet, which provides peer support and small grants to veterinary professionals, said ownership isn’t the only factor driving staff morale.
“There are positives and negatives,” Tsontos said. Some clinics do well by their staff and some do not, she said of both private and corporate practices.
Higher costs, more tests, same care
Cochran’s own experience as a customer offers a complicated picture.
The staff stayed. Her dog’s main veterinarian is now the practice’s medical director. Appointments have never been hard to get. A photo she sends after hours lands in her dog’s file and receives a prompt reply. She has never felt pushed toward tests she did not want.
“They’re very transparent about what’s necessary, what’s not,” she said.
When her dog Lucy developed aging-related complications, testing and visits increased, but Cochran will not attribute that to ownership. “I really can’t say if it was corporate-led or if it was just having a senior dog with issues.”
Lucy was diagnosed with a brain tumor and treated for more than a year by a neurologist at Avets Specialty and Emergency Trauma Center in Monroeville, part of the Ethos Veterinary Health chain. It cost less than Cochran expected. “I never felt pressured or guilty,” she said of the end-of-life conversations.
Beyond her vet, Cochran is wary of corporate takeovers in any line of business. “It takes away any kind of fair competition,” she said.
How to find out who owns your veterinarian
Tracking who owns your vet through online records can be tricky. The best way, according to Volk, is just to ask.
In his view, those who don’t like the service – whether corporate or private – can usually pick from multiple options. “Ultimately it’s the customer who wins,” he said.
“I would like pet owners to research what businesses they are supporting … and who is behind them.”
Angelina De Sanctis
De Sanctis sees it differently.
“When corporate ends up owning the entire pipeline, driving out all independently owned veterinary businesses, then there will be no alternative, no independent-owner pricing based on what a community can afford, no competition,” she wrote in response to questions before an interview.
“I would like pet owners to research what businesses they are supporting,” she wrote, “and who is behind them.”
Feixu Chen was an editorial intern at Pittsburgh’s Public Source and can be reached at feixu@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Danny Arensberg.
MOST READ STORIES
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
