Historically, practice ownership for veterinarians has been the best avenue to wealth creation, and today that continues to be the case. A life-long associate at a general practice can make a decent living, but will likely never accumulate significant wealth – especially with student debt payments stretching well into their career. So how does an associate in today’s landscape enter into ownership with practice values skyrocketing and corporate interest at an all-time high?
It is important for the veterinary profession to continue to have a major say in its own destiny as more practices are owned by corporate groups, whose influence on the business and clinical side of industry is growing. It is also critical for the veterinary industry to continue to attract the best college students with a passion for animal health, but given the high cost of veterinary school, there needs to be opportunities for veterinarians to earn sufficient income to pay back loans and support their families. Without the ability to have a ‘return on the investment’ on veterinary education, the best young people, passionate about animal health, will start to pursue other professions.
A new opportunity is gaining speed in the industry to help advance the careers of young veterinarians’ careers and help them build wealth. Partnership/Co-Ownership has proven to be an avenue by which associates are able to buy into their practices earlier than they ever thought possible. Here at VPP, we can even help associates who are interested in co-ownership secure the funds necessary to buy-in.
At VPP, we are committed to providing our veterinarians the opportunity to co-own our practices with them – providing the business support while our veterinarian co-owners lead the clinical side and have the ability to prosper financially as an owner. Many of our co-owners partnered with VPP to give their associates a chance to become part–owners, and it is happening regularly at our practices. Learn more about VPP’s co-ownership option here.
It is imperative for veterinary schools to teach business skills to students so they have a similar level of confidence in their ability to diagnosis a distressed dog as they do in determining how to improve the profitability of their practice. Young, capable practice owners will be able to grow practices that compete with larger corporate owned competitors nearby – it just takes the right education, personality and work ethic to grow a small practice into a larger one.
