Do you know who owns your veterinarian?
Most pet owners don't. Over the past decade, a large share of American veterinary practices were bought by national corporate groups — and most kept their original name, logo, and front desk. Nothing about your visit announces the change. Your invoice does.
This page explains what happened, why it shows up in what you're charged, and how to find out who owns any practice in about five minutes. Then it tells you exactly where we stand, because a practice asking that question should answer it first.
The sign on the building didn't change. The ownership did.
Roughly ten years ago, corporate groups owned about one in ten veterinary practices in the United States. Estimates today put that figure somewhere between 30% and 50%, and the largest single group operates close to 3,000 hospitals worldwide.1
Acquiring companies usually keep the practice's local name, and nothing in the law requires them to tell you the practice was sold. When researchers examined corporate-owned practices that had kept their original branding, only a small fraction disclosed that ownership anywhere on their own website.2
Federal regulators have taken notice. The Federal Trade Commission has brought enforcement actions against private-equity roll-ups of veterinary clinics, requiring the buyer to sell off clinics in overlapping markets and — unusually — to get the Commission's advance approval before making further purchases in certain states.3
What changes after a sale is where decisions get made. Pricing, service protocols, product lines, and staffing targets tend to move to a regional or national office. The veterinarian you see stays in the exam room. The person setting the price of a dental cleaning may be in another state.
This is not an argument that corporate veterinarians practice bad medicine. They don't. Many are our colleagues, and we refer cases to some of them. The argument is narrower and, we think, harder to dispute: you were never told, and it affects what you pay.
The hidden cost of corporate owned practices
of corporate-owned practices that kept their local branding disclosed that ownership anywhere on their own website.2
annual increase in veterinary service prices through early 2026, against roughly 2.4% for consumer prices overall.4
rise in the cost of veterinary care over the past decade — the fastest-rising category of pet spending since 2019.4
pet owners now carrying more than $2,000 in debt related to their pet's care.5
Three places the difference tends to appear
None of this is hidden, exactly. It's just never explained at the front desk.
The estimate arrives after the exam
A free or discounted first exam is a common way to bring in new clients. The exam is where the recommendations get made, so the cost moves to the line items underneath it — diagnostics, dentistry, surgery, medication. A free exam is not the same thing as a lower bill.
High-cost procedures carry the margin
Vaccines and nail trims are easy to price-shop, so they stay competitive nearly everywhere. Dental cleanings, imaging, surgery, and long-term management of chronic disease are where the real differences live — and those are the numbers almost nobody publishes.
Referrals move up the chain
When a case needs a specialist, it typically goes to a specialty hospital, with a new consultation fee, a new doctor, and a new record. Continuity has a cost, and the cost usually lands on you.
Four ways to check who owns any veterinary practice
Do this for us too. We'd rather you verified it than took our word for it.
01 Read the bottom of the invoice, not the top
The practice name appears at the top. The legal entity that actually bills you often appears in the fine print at the bottom, in the payment processor line, or on your credit card statement. If that name doesn't match the sign on the door, look it up.
02 Search that name in California's business registry
The Secretary of State's business search at bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov is free and public. Search the entity name from your invoice. You'll see where it's registered, who the agent for service of process is, and whether it's a California entity or one registered out of state. A practice owned by a national group frequently shows an out-of-state parent or a registered agent service rather than a local person.
03 Check the website's privacy policy and careers page
Marketing pages keep the local name. Legal and hiring pages usually can't. Privacy policies name the company that controls your data. Job listings often route to a corporate careers portal with a different name at the top and hundreds of other locations listed. Both are quick to check.
04 Ask. Directly.
You're allowed to. It's a fair question about a business you're trusting with your animal and your money, and any practice should be able to answer it in one sentence.
West Coast Animal Hospital is independently owned.
We are owned and operated by Dr. Megan Gibbings and Dr. Stefanie Young. There is no parent company, no regional pricing office, and no outside investor group. Both owners practice medicine here.
- Owners
- Dr. Megan Gibbings, Owner and Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Stefanie Young, Co-owner and Medical Director.
- Locations
- Linda Vista — 5269 Linda Vista Rd, San Diego, CA 92110. Pacific Beach — 1362 Garnet Ave., San Diego, CA 92109.
- Who sets prices
- The owners, in this building. Not a corporate schedule, and not a formula we can't explain to you.
- Specialists
- Board-certified specialists travel to us rather than sending you elsewhere — surgery with Dr. David Demner every other Friday, plus internal medicine and cardiology. Your regular doctor stays on the case. The services section of this site describes each specialty in detail.
- Published prices
- We publish what we charge for the procedures people actually shop for, before you're sitting in the room. See our pricing.
The part most practices leave off the page
If we're asking you to look closely at how veterinary businesses present themselves, we should be specific about our own limits. Here they are.
- We're open 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, seven days a week. We are closed overnight.
- We're appointment-first. We hold time each day for urgent cases and can often see you the same day — but it isn't guaranteed, so please call ahead rather than driving over.
- We do not hospitalize patients overnight. Animals needing continuous overnight monitoring are transferred to a 24-hour emergency hospital.
- We are not an emergency hospital. If your pet needs emergency care, go to one — don't wait for our doors to open.
Send it to us. We'll price the same plan in writing.
You don't need to be our client, and there's no exam fee for the comparison. Send us the estimate — a photo of the printout is fine — and we'll quote what the same plan costs here, in writing, so you can compare two real numbers instead of guessing.
The itemized estimate, plus your pet's species, breed, age, and weight. Photos are fine.
Our written price for the same items, with the variables that could change it stated plainly.
A second opinion on the medicine. We won't second-guess another veterinarian's judgment on a patient we haven't examined — that takes an exam, and it's a separate conversation we're glad to have.
We publish our sources for the same reason we publish our prices. Add final citations and links before publishing; re-verify each figure.
- Corporate ownership share of U.S. veterinary practices and hospital counts — industry reporting and consolidation analyses, 2025–2026. source + link
- CARE for Pets, study of ownership disclosure on corporate-owned veterinary practice websites that retained local branding. confirm study scope, year, and link
- Federal Trade Commission, actions requiring JAB Consumer Partners to divest veterinary clinics as a condition of its acquisitions of SAGE Veterinary Partners and Ethos Veterinary Health, and to obtain prior approval for certain future clinic acquisitions (2022). Those orders concerned specialty and emergency clinics. add ftc.gov links
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index, veterinary services vs. all items. source + link
- Pet-related debt survey, 2025. source + link
West Coast Animal Hospital is independently owned and operated by Dr. Megan Gibbings and Dr. Stefanie Young. Linda Vista and Pacific Beach, San Diego. Open 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM, seven days a week. (619) 431-1423.
This page is general information about the veterinary industry and about our practice. It is not medical advice and does not describe treatment for any individual animal. Published prices and quoted comparisons apply to our own practice only.