New vet school announced -- Rowan University

Crapshooter
Mon, 24 Feb 2025 21:51:07 +0000

DadTwoGirls:

I have also been leery of a DVM going into private practice. I think that there are just too many legal and regulatory ways to make this difficult.

You are probably overthinking this part - Business Insurance covers Veterinary Practices as it does for other businesses and for the most part is no more or less expensive proportionately.
From a malpractice perspective I have been hearing for 30 years that litigation against veterinarians for Malpractice has been increasing and the awards are getting larger and larger. I believe this is propaganda and hype - propaganda from the companies selling high level medicine diagnostics, therapies etc and pushing “gold standard” or you’ll get sued, and hype from the Veterinary Schools and Specialists who are pushing "Gold Standards…and refer to the specialists). Here is why - our Malpractice Insurance Rates have not been skyrocketing, in fact, the rate of increase on my Malpractice Insurance has been the -lowest- increases (%) of all my business expenses. I believe I am paying a bit less than $500 a year for a 3M (Single Incident) / $ 5M cumulative (annual) policy and a another $ 100 a year in License Defense coverage. So the malpractice is for the Civil action costs and the License Defense is so that I have a specialized attorney to represent me in front of the Licensing board. Thus the actuarials employed by the major insurance providers, who should know their numbers down pat, have determined our malpractice risk/payouts continues to remain very low.

Lastly, as far as Regulatory - yes it has gotten a bit more rigorous as the years go by - but its not that bad, especially once you’ve established your protocols/maintenance schedule and so you known when you need to do what and what inspections are coming when and what to expect.

TBH, the most difficult part of owning/managing the practice is the PEOPLE part… HR for Employees and managing client interactions. And if someone thiunks they are going to escape those by staying in corporate / private equity as an associate rather than an owner (or escape it as a referral specialist)… they are going to be disappointed to find out, they’ll still have to deal with it.

DadTwoGirls:

I just did a quick Google search that said that the average debt for all recent DVM graduates was $147,258, but the average debt for those recent DVM graduates who have debt is $179,505. If I did the math right, this would suggest that 82% of recent DVM graduates have debt. This does roughly agree with what my daughter has been saying. I think that the 18% without debt have found a good career that will pay well enough and be relatively recession free. However, I would be nervous for any recent or soon-to-be graduate whose total debt exceeds their starting salary.

It’s worse than what you’ve googled.
Imo, the VIN Foundation does the best at ferreting out the data and compiling it. (Bias disclosure as I am a past Board Member and Finance Chair some years back). Having worked with a lot of these “kids” (Vets out less than 5-10 years) many of them are very negatively impacted by the reality of their debt load and inability to make head way on it - MANY- are gambling on the 20-25 year government repayment and forgiveness plans (of which they will likely be taxed as unearned income for whatever debt gets waved in year 20-25). MANY are accumulating more debt each year, as their minimum payments under these programs doesn’t even cover their monthly interest payments.

vin.com

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