With the silver tsunami, veterinarians must find a way to sell their practices to secure their retirement. For some, that means selling to another veterinarian. Increasingly, veterinary practices are being sold to private equity firms, although many veterinarians are worried this will mean their practice focuses more on making money than helping pets and their owners.
One option that deserves consideration is employee ownership. Two companies, 1st Pet Veterinary Services—a 300-employee, 3-location veterinary practice based in Chandler, Arizona—and a startup, Galaxy Vets, have found this approach to be the optimal solution.
To employees or anyone else, a key consideration when selling a veterinary practice is if your state has corporate practice of medicine (CPOM) laws, which most, but not all, states have. These laws are designed to prohibit the ownership of a medical practice by non-professionals. In recent years, however, private equity has increasingly purchased medical practices by creating management service organizations (MSOs), companies that take on all the operational tasks of a practice as a separate corporation contracting with the medical practice. In states with strong CPOM laws, the MSO cannot hire physicians, in other states they can. In the “weak” CPOM states, the MSO can also make a variety of other business decisions while in strong states the physicians must have much more control. There are varying rules on how fees are split as well. These laws mean...
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