This is a regular topic of sometimes quite heated discussion! Corporate clinics are here to stay, but are they all bad? Let’s look at the pro’s and con’s.
Corporate clinics have the benefit of having all the business, HR, legal and marketing side of things managed by a Head Office. This reduces the administration workload of the clinic by a great deal. It also means that those business and administration tasks are managed by people who are trained to do them. But, there can be a long approval process for new equipment and changes to rostering, as decisions may have to go before a board for discussion. It may also be difficult for individual vets to have their voices heard, and ideas brought to fruition.
Working for a corporate clinic has the advantage of staff potentially being able to transfer between clinics, to a new area or even a new country. This is very rarely possible with a private clinic. Also, they can be a great place for new graduate vets to work, and some corporations will have New Graduate programs in place to mentor and support less experienced vets. They are often more structured, with increased employee benefits (such as private health care, subscriptions, access to mental health support etc). But, some corporate clinics can potentially reduce the clinical freedom of the staff who work there, sometimes having quite rigid protocols, products that can and cannot be used, and also pricing. They may also be less “family friendly” and less flexible with working conditions.
Corporate clinics situated in a similar area can share resources of staff, supplies and also knowledge. Internal referrals are a great way to keep business within the company. But there may be increased emphasis on financial success and the money that individual vets are bringing into the clinic, which can put pressure on staff to ‘upsell’.
To be honest, having experienced both corporate and private practice as a small animal vet (both here in Australia, and in the UK), I think that there are good and bad examples of both types of practice. We certainly shouldn’t generalise, but instead take each business on its individual merits. “Corporate” clinics are run in many different ways – some will want every clinic to function in exactly the same way, and these tend to be a lot less flexible than the corporations who let each individual clinic be run as a separate entity under the corporate banner. The latter clinics have more chance to foster a “family atmosphere” where clients feel they know everyone, and are known by the staff, and each clinic can have more of an individual feel.
What is your experience of practice? Do you think that one type of practice works better than another? We’d love to hear your views!
