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When you walk into a veterinary clinic today, the familiar smell of disinfectant, the cheerful voice at reception, and the gentle touch of the nurse are reassuring constants. The posters on the wall, the staff uniforms, and even the family-owned feeling. All may appear unchanged. But behind the front desk, the heart of many clinics beats to a different rhythm now. It’s not the rhythm of a local practice owner checking the surgery schedule. It’s the pulse of corporate metrics,

When you walk into a veterinary clinic, you’re not usually thinking about who owns it. You’re thinking about your dog’s limp, your cat’s cough, or your parrot’s plucked feathers. You expect compassion, competence, and continuity. What you don’t expect is that the clinic’s decisions about medicine, staffing, or even pricing may be influenced not by the veterinarians themselves, but by a distant corporate office or an investment fund whose primary obligation is to its sharehold

When a pet owner walks into a veterinary hospital, they see the same reassuring faces, the same compassionate care, and the same polished reception desk. What they rarely see, indeed, what is seldom mentioned, is who actually owns the practice. In Australia today, a significant number of veterinary clinics, specialty hospitals, and emergency centers, belong to large corporate networks backed by private-equity capital. The biggest of them all is Greencross Group , which operat

Twenty years ago, preparing to give a lecture at a conference meant embarking on a logistical expedition. My suitcase was packed not with clothes but with boxes of Kodachrome slides, each one labeled and numbered. Preparing a single slide could take hours. Photographs had to be scanned or re-photographed. Text had to be shot onto diazotype film. Then came the anxious wait for slide processing, hoping the lab didn’t scratch or miscut a frame. There was no margin for error and

On 15 October 2025, the UK Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) released its provisional decision  in the veterinary market investigation. Among 21 proposed remedies: mandatory publication of price lists , clearer ownership disclosure , itemized bills , a cap on prescription-writing fees  (proposed at £16), and support for a national price-comparison service . Final decisions are slated by March 2026 , with staged implementation thereafter. The Upside: Why publishing vet pri

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)  released its long-awaited report this week (15 October 2025) on the UK veterinary industry. The report calls for price transparency, ownership disclosure, and fairer access to prescription medicines. The findings make strong headlines:   Vets must publish prices , Corporate ownership under scrutiny , Consumers could save hundreds . But amid the flurry of attention to pricing and transparency, one issue slipped through the cracks: T

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)   in the United Kingdom released its long-awaited report on the veterinary sector today (15 October 2025), and it’s already making headlines. The key takeaway? Vets should be required to: Publish their prices Disclose their corporate affiliations, and Make it easier for pet owners to compare costs and access cheaper medicines online. On the surface, that sounds entirely reasonable. Transparency is good for any profession.But beneath

As a veterinarian, educator, and author, I’ve often reflected on how we define the moral boundaries of our relationship with animals. In...

On that morning in 1996, the exam room at the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital was already full before the black Labrador...

This is Part 1 of a series of blog posts regarding corporatization’s near-term shocks and long-term stakes. Corporatization isn’t...

TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read) From 2026-2035 specialty care will keep expanding, corporate ownership will remain influential (and more...

If you’ve heard that dopamine is the brain’s feel-good molecule , you’ve only got the movie trailer, not the full film. Dopamine is less...

Vet school lectures are seldom attended by Gen Zers, who prefer to learn via digital platforms in their own time Fifteen years ago, I...

Modern tools and timeless judgment shape better patient care. In veterinary medicine, clinical decision-making is rarely about a single...

Conceptual diagram of the complex iterative processes involved in practicing contextualized care, acknowledging the involvement of...

In veterinary medicine, as in all professions, the strength of a leader is measured not by the title on the door or the number of...

In 1969, Dr. Laurence J. Peter introduced a painfully humorous yet alarmingly accurate concept in his book The Peter Principle: Why...

When the day gets busy, or fatigue sets in, the first casualty in a veterinarian’s schedule is often thinking time . To stay afloat, we...

In human healthcare, narrative medicine  emerged in the early 2000s as a response to the increasing depersonalization of modern medical...

While diet and exercise are often blamed for rising obesity rates, accumulating evidence points to a less visible culprit—...