VPN Plus+ ExclusiveBig vet energy, fading fastApril 24, 2025By Patty Khuly, VMD, MBAThe only photo I have on my desk at work is one a classmate snapped during my field service rotation 30 years ago last month. Dinosaur that I am, it was one of those pictures you print at the drugstore photo lab in doubles to give away to your new colleagues at graduation. In it, I'm cradling a Pygmy goat kid…and I'm beaming. It exudes "big vet energy" in the best way possible. Everyone has a picture like that—one that captures their veterinary essence in peak bloom. It represents the moment you first recognized yourself as a real veterinarian. It says, "This is what I am. This is what I do. I was made for this." If your version of this picture isn't already on your desk, it probably should be. It will keep you grounded and inspired, humbled yet exultant. When things go wrong, it'll soothe you to recall why you made the choices you did. When everything's just as you think it should be, it will boost your mood all the more. Ironically, though, it is this photo that made me realize I was ready to end my career as I knew it. Sitting at my desk, crunching …
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VPN Plus+ Exclusive10 lessons veterinary medicine can learn from human healthcare's biggest challengesMarch 27, 2025By Patty Khuly, VMD, MBAHuman healthcare has a lot to teach us, especially since its challenges tend to precede ours. The industry serves as a reliable sentinel for up-and-coming concerns we are likely to confront in the near future, which is what this post is all about. Although these scary prospects don’t yet keep us up all night, they are well worth contemplating as we head into the second half of the decade.
VPN Plus+ ExclusiveKhuly sold to a corporation!September 5, 2024By Patty Khuly, VMD, MBAI’m still getting used to this strange bedfellow of ours. What’s more, I’m not quite sure what to make of the fact I can’t manage to despise it yet. Never in a million years would I have predicted the relative equanimity I’ve experienced throughout this process. After all, as anyone who has caught any part of my decades-long writing career can attest, I’ve carefully nurtured a poisonous aversion to corporate takeovers in veterinary medicine.
VPN Plus+ ExclusiveSeeing the light in selling to 'the dark side'March 29, 2024Four years ago, I did something that surprised me—I sold my practice to “the dark side,” a veterinary corporation. I never intended to do this, as I had heard so many negative comments about the problems of selling to the corporate world. Below are details about my journey that include issues I’ve never heard anyone else share about selling a practice to a corporation and continuing to work for the purchaser.
Are small-town clinics on the way out?July 6, 2018Veterinary practice ownership, like the continental drift, is gradually moving and shifting across our time. The trend now points toward increased corporate ownership and practice consolidators, whereas previously there were more private, solo-owned practices.
