@pluralistic I'm so envious. Our local vet prices are extortionate now after PE ruined it. We needed to have some relatively minor treatment for our dog last year. I did the math and it would have been cheaper to fly first class to a Midwest city, stay at a 4-star hotel, have the work done, and come home than to pay the local vet.

No doubt about it, PE is literally killing pets. Everyone wants to do right by their furry friends, but when you get a quote for $10K, you start to weigh options.

@pluralistic Our vets set up their own practice after the clinic they worked at was taken over by a PE backed owner. Of course we followed them, and continue to get better, lower cost care.

@pluralistic I was wondering if a directory of independent practices existed, and this looks like a decent starting place (it appears to be a directory of directories.)

Find A Local Vet | Vet Local

Vet Local (www.vetlocal.us)

@cwicseolfor@zeroes.ca @pluralistic@mamot.fr Looking at the map for our area, it's depressing how few entries are marked. VCA has bought up most of the practices that were independent when we first moved here. VCA has definitely bad news for local pet owners.

@pluralistic I note that in the UK ophthalmologists and dentists are being rolled up by PE, even if GP surgeries and hospitals *so far* are mostly safe. (Another Tory government would change that, fast.)

@ferricoxide @pluralistic @cwicseolfor
VCA is a cancer on the vet industry. Our former vet sold out to VCA when he retired and chucked the whole practice under a steamroller. Couldn't keep good vets, many unneeded diagnostic tests and suddenly we couldn't get regular meds, just the new "house brand". We found a new practice after they couldn't diagnose a flea infestation.
The new one is independent, but under the same crushing need to have cash flow.

@markwoll@universeodon.com @pluralistic@mamot.fr @cwicseolfor@zeroes.ca

Yeah. When we moved into our house (fall of 2002), there was a very good, independent vet less than 1mi from our house. I had a pair of Bengals when we first moved in, so, that's where I started taking them (and the dogs that we adopted in the years following). It was a great practice …until they got acquired by VCA in 2016 (or maybe 2015). The other than adding the VCA logo to their signage, the changes weren't immediately noticeable. Then we lost a dog to kidney failure in early 2017. When I reviewed her bloodwork from the previous two years' physicals, I saw that there were abnormal numbers for her kidney labs. The vets overseeing her care had apparently not noticed them, at the time, presumably because, since the VCA acquisition, they didn't have enough time to pay attention to the details.

During that 2015-2017 period, they'd also had a high turnover among their treating personnel and their prices spiked. But, due the location, and the fact that being our "regular" vet, we got discounted access to their emergency-hours services. So, we'd just sucked it up. However, we didn't change practices until 2019 when they discontinued the 24hr emergency-service part of the practice. At that point, we had no compelling reason to pay the premium plus the bloodwork-gaff that preceded the 2017 loss of our one dog made me say, "yeah, fuck these guys" and change practices.

Was only recently that I found out that the new practice is also PE-owned. My criteria for selection of a new vet had merely been "not VCA-owned" (and not BanField, et. al.). The new practice wasn't slathered with "chain" logos and appeared to only be a local practice-group (at the time of our switch, they only had two locations). The only reason I found out that our "new" veterinary practice is PE owned is I was speaking with their practice-manager about recent changes to their prescription policies. It was in explaining to her why we'd changed practices that she revealed "for the sake of transparency" that they, too, were PE-owned (thankfully nont VCA). So, yeah, they're on a very short leash, now.