VeterinaryPracticeNowThe Practice WireEvery story we've run.
17 stories on the science and business of veterinary practice. Browse by section.
The rural vet who mentors students every summer, and the placement data nobody has yet
Christine McPherson Long hosts students every summer. Whether they take rural jobs after graduation is a question the program doesn't answer.
4 min read · Aug 5
The prep-room bottleneck costing you billable time between cases
Inefficient room flow bleeds time you can't bill for. A dual-boarded surgeon's checklist of the layout variables that actually move the needle.
6 min read · Aug 4
Your practice burns 400-600 hours a year on prescription admin alone
A typical practice may spend the equivalent of a quarter FTE on prescription admin. Here's what digital workflow actually reclaims.
5 min read · Aug 3
Fourteen Cats Got Dog Plasma. Here's the Number Emergency Vets Need.
Five of fourteen survived to discharge. Small sample, but it's the only published count emergency vets have for xenotransfusion.
4 min read · Jul 30
CVS Just Became Your Pharmacy Competitor, and Your Client Already Has the App
The chain has auto-refill infrastructure and monthly visit frequency. You have the prescription pad and the relationship.
3 min read · Jul 30
Roo Just Put a Number on Every Relief Shift You Couldn't Fill
Analytics Center turns logged relief coverage into fill rates, cancellation patterns, and site-level gaps you can act on.
4 min read · Jul 30
Eleven High Schoolers Just Spent Five Weeks in Vet Research Labs. One Learned She Could Skip Surgery.
A weak stomach nearly ended one participant's veterinary dream. Then she found the lab work. What NC State's pilot tells us about the pipeline.
4 min read · Jul 29
Your CE Hours Might Not Count. Here Is How to Check.
State boards do not share a rulebook on continuing education, and a hallway certificate from a sponsor booth is not automatically the same thing as a credit your license renewal will accept.
4 min read · Jul 28
Burnout by the Numbers: What the 18 Percent Actually Looks Like
The Merck Animal Health-AVMA Wellbeing Study switched to a validated burnout instrument in 2023, and the new granularity shows work-life balance beating income as the strongest predictor of who is running on empty.
5 min read · Jul 28
Mars, NVA, and IVC Evidensia Are Not the Same Job
All three own thousands of hospitals and call their doctors "associates," but the paycheck, the mentorship, and who owns the practice down the line look nothing alike.
4 min read · Jul 28
The Debt-to-Income Number Your Signing Bonus Won't Fix
AVMA's own senior survey puts the class of 2025 at $1.40 of debt for every dollar of starting salary, and that ratio rarely shows up next to the salary line in a recruiting pitch.
4 min read · Jul 28
What 498 Dogs With Bloat Can (and Can't) Tell You About the Next One
Three real JVECC retrospective papers reveal how a survival rate, a case series, and an untreated cohort can each mislead a reader who stops at the abstract.
4 min read · Jul 28
The One Number to Check Before You Quote a JAVMA Study to a Client
The n in a paper's abstract and the n behind the specific number you're about to say out loud are often two different numbers, and the gap between them is where bad client conversations start.
4 min read · Jul 28
Specialty and ER Went Corporate First. The Math Explains Why
Brakke Consulting estimates corporate groups own roughly 75 percent of specialty and emergency hospitals versus about 25 to 30 percent of general practices as of 2023, a gap that opened years before private equity discovered the neighborhood GP clinic.
4 min read · Jul 28
The "700-800 a year" consolidation number is five years old. Here's what replaced it.
We traced the stat everyone repeats about corporate practice buyouts back to its source, found it stopped being true in 2022, and mapped who is actually buying now.
5 min read · Jul 28
Reading a Corporate Offer Like You Owe $212,499
Corporate groups out-bid independents on the signing bonus line almost every time, but the number that decides your first three years is buried in the compensation formula, not the headline offer.
5 min read · Jul 28
AVMA's 2026 Report Puts New-Grad Debt at 1.4x First-Year Pay. Here's What That Means for Your Contract.
The debt-to-income math hasn't moved since 2022, but where you sign your first contract, corporate group or independent practice, now swings your starting pay by more than $20,000.
5 min read · Jul 28