The Alarming Problem With Emergency Vet Clinics

The Alarming Problem With Emergency Vet Clinics

On October 28, 2025, Mountainside Animal Emergency & Specialty—North Vancouver's only 24/7 emergency veterinary hospital—announced it would close permanently on December 5, 2025.

In their statement they cite the reason as: "we have ultimately reached the difficult conclusion that we can no longer maintain operations effectively"

For residents on the North Shore, the news was jarring. When your pet needs emergency care at 2 a.m., you don't want to find out your nearest option is now across the bridge in Vancouver. Every minute matters in a crisis.

What's striking isn't just that Mountainside is closing. It's why—and what that reveals about the consolidation reshaping emergency veterinary care across North America.

The Ownership Question Nobody Asks

When you search for "emergency vet near me," you see clinic names, addresses, and star ratings. What you typically don't see: who actually owns these facilities. That oversight matters more than most pet owners realize.

According to research published in the Canadian Veterinary Journal, corporate entities own over 50% of emergency and specialty hospitals in Canada—significantly higher than the 20.4% ownership rate for general veterinary practices. And ownership is concentrated: three major firms dominate.

VetStrategy (backed by Berkshire Partners' $1.4 billion investment through subsidiary IVC Envdensia) operates 367 clinics across nine provinces, including at least 16 emergency hospitals.

VCA Canada (owned by Mars Inc., which acquired VCA for $9.1 billion in 2017) operates emergency facilities across major Canadian cities including Vancouver.

NVA Canada (owned by JAB Holding Company, acquired for $5.0 billion in 2019) operates 141 Canadian clinics, including multiple emergency hospitals through its Ethos Veterinary Health brand.

Together, these three corporations own or operate more than 600 veterinary clinics in Canada.

Mountainside Animal Emergency & Specialty is one of them—owned by NVA Canada.

Why Corporate Ownership Creates Structural Pressure

Here's what's important to understand: this isn't about corporate vets being poorly run or uncaring. It's about the financial pressures embedded in how they're funded.

Emergency hospitals are genuinely expensive to operate. They require 24/7 staffing across multiple shifts, specialized equipment and surgical facilities, board-certified emergency veterinarians commanding premium compensation, and continuous overhead costs regardless of patient volume. These operational realities are real and significant.

But when private equity firms acquire veterinary practices, they acquire them with specific financial expectations. Industry standards target 20-25% annual returns. They purchase clinics at a premium, run a fairly typical playbook, then try to demonstrate profitability for eventual exits through IPOs or sales.

* Berkshire Partner's investment in VetStrategy was for 70%, at 100% the investment would be ~$2.0B and ~2.6x
** The values provided have been converted to CAD based on the average exchange at time of the investment

These are significant investments, and the math is straightforward. When a facility can't generate the expected returns—particularly an expensive-to-operate emergency hospital experiencing volume declines or operating margin pressures—it becomes a candidate for closure. The closure isn't malicious; it's what the financial model demands.

The playbook, as mentioned, is fairly standard: consolidate regional markets, centralize operations and procurement, invest in technology and systems, optimize pricing and margin structure. Many of these moves genuinely improve the overall performance of a clinic.

The problem is, at scale, they also concentrate market power, increase pricing, and reduce transparency around costs. These factors are major contributors to the decrease in total annual visits by 2.3% in 2024 from 2023. So when the number of customers drop, your most powerful lever to hit margin targets becomes operational execution, and there lies the crux of the problem. Trying to, and I quote "...maintain operations effectively" in an emergency hospital is exceptionally difficult. Closure is almost certain without consistency from the other levers.

The Cost of Consolidation

We analyzed wellness exam fees across 100+ Vancouver-area clinics in Vetpras' data and found clear patterns:

• Corporate-owned clinics averaged $113.51 for wellness exams
• Independent clinics in comparable neighborhoods averaged $82.92
• That's a $30.59 premium—or 37% higher—for corporate facilities

Pet owners are paying significantly more for the corporate structure and overhead.

In fact, since MARS acquired VCA in 2017, marking the beginning of large-scale corporate consolidation in Canada's veterinary sector, costs have increased by approximately 51% cumulatively, while general inflation rose only 25% over the same period.

Even as general inflation dropped from ~6.8% to ~2.4% (2022-2024) vet cost inflation rose from 7.0% to 8.0%

The Evidence: Consolidation Unraveling

The model is showing cracks.

262 enterprise-owned veterinary practices in North America closed permanently in Q1 2025 alone. These weren't all emergency hospitals, but industry analysts point to emergency and specialty facilities as particularly vulnerable—precisely because their operational costs are highest.

Industry analyst Chris Kelly noted the pattern: "Many large veterinary enterprise groups are under continued financial pressure, driven by investor expectations and the need to demonstrate profitability. As a result, the focus has pivoted away from aggressive acquisitions toward operational efficiency. Underperforming or strategically misaligned locations are increasingly being shuttered."

NVA Canada's parent company has been open about its financial restructuring. The firm is preparing for a potential IPO and recently split into two separate businesses to streamline operations—moves that typically precede asset rationalization. When a corporation needs to demonstrate profitability for investors, underperforming facilities get closed.

The typical holding period for a private equity firm engaged in a roll-up strategy ranges from 4-7 years. 2026 will mark the 7th year since NVAs acquisition. Generally speaking, the aim would be 4-6x return on the original investment by applying the playbook strategies noted above. Most research indicates record profitability for vet clinics during and post covid (2020-2023) - and likely reversal the past two years due to inflation, economic and financial pressure on its customers, and the continued increase in vet costs through these periods.

Closures, especially sudden closures, are deliberate moves designed to maximize the perceived health and profitability of businesses ahead of a public offering. It's a common private-equity strategy to drive as much short-term optimization - as the public market investors focus first on financials and growth signals, not community impact.

The Alternative Model That Works

Here's what complicates the narrative: independent, owner-operated emergency hospitals do exist, and they often operate more sustainably than corporate counterparts.

Canada West Veterinary Specialists in Vancouver has operated since 1997 as an independent, veterinarian-led facility with approximately 150 staff providing 24/7/365 emergency and specialty care. The facility has "pioneered the provision in Canada of multi-disciplinary veterinary specialist care combined with a dedicated 24 hour hospital facility."

Boundary Bay Veterinary Specialty Hospital was recently named the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association's 2025 Practice of the Year—notably as "the only VECCS Level I facility in Canada to receive this award." It operates 24/7 with board-certified specialists across multiple disciplines.

Both facilities prove something important: emergency veterinary care can be sustainable without private equity backing. The difference isn't capability or clinical quality. It's the financial model and ownership priorities.

Veterinarian-led, independent ownership tends to prioritize long-term community viability over short-term investor returns. That doesn't guarantee permanence, but it removes a specific structural pressure: the pressure to close underperforming assets to satisfy investor expectations.

What Pet Owners Actually Need to Know

The consolidation of emergency veterinary care creates a real but largely invisible vulnerability.

Pet owners making emergency decisions rely on proximity, recommendations, and reviews. They don't research ownership structure or financial stability, that information doesn't matter in the moments of an emergency.

But Mountainside's closure demonstrates that ownership matters - and will increasingly continue to matter in the coming years. Corporate-owned facilities may disappear with minimal notice when financial pressures mount, and given the timelines of these investments and typical holding times, it is not hard not to imagine seeing more clinics in our communities disappear suddenly while costs continue to rise.

This information gap is exactly what Vetpras was designed to address.

The Transparency Imperative

The problem isn't that corporate veterinary practitioners are inherently bad—most provide excellent care and many clinics have genuinely improved operations and customer experience. The problem is the financial engine: designed to prioritize profitability over long-term community stability.

When essential infrastructure like emergency veterinary care is shaped by private equity return expectations, communities face vulnerabilities inherited by their business models.

As Canadians, we've watched this dynamic play out in human healthcare in the United States—where consolidation, corporate ownership, and investor-driven priorities have created well-documented access and affordability crises. We're seeing remarkably similar patterns emerge in veterinary care here.

Mountainside's closure is a wake-up call: the structure of emergency veterinary care in your region matters. Consolidation promised efficiency and investment. It delivered higher prices, financial pressure on facilities, and a wave of closures leaving communities without essential options when they are needed most.

Pet owners deserve access to tools that let them search and compare options—to know what services are available, how much they cost, and whether a clinic is independently owned or part of corporate consolidation. This level of transparency is what helps make pet care more accessible by empowering informed decisions.

This is the "what" and "why" we've built Vetpras, and amazing pet owners continue to be the "how" - by anonymously submitting your vet bill, you help the people in your community make more informed decisions about their pet's care.