Sheri Gilmartin, CVT and VP of Sales at Vetsource, joins Dr. Andy Roark to share data-driven insights on the current state of veterinary practices in 2025. With access to anonymized data from over 8,000 clinics, Sheri discusses key trends—including declining client visits, slowing revenue growth, and how independent practices are performing compared to corporate groups. They also explore rising interest in feline care, the impact of pricing strategies, and how practices that prioritize client communication and a spectrum of care approach may be better positioned in today’s economic landscape. This conversation is a helpful check-in for anyone wondering where the profession stands right now and what to consider when planning for the future.
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Sheri is a Credentialed Veterinary Technician and has been working in the veterinary industry for 30 years. She started her career in a small animal hospital outside of Boston MA where she worked as a technician for 8 years. In 2000, she made the move to Industry and has held various positions in sales and marketing at Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Vetsource, Patterson, and VetSuccess. In 2018, Vetsource acquired VetSuccess, where Sheri leads sales of Data Services today.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. I’m here with my friend, Sheri Gilmartin. She’s a CVT. I think I forget to mention that when I introduced her later on. Anyway she is, she’s a fascinating person. She has got her finger on the pulse of the of the vet profession in that she works with Vet Source and has access to data from over 8,000 veterinary hospitals across the United States.
And, she knows what’s going on. And so I talked to her about what are the trends that she sees what’s happening with our profession? What is the, what’s the state of the industry? And she lays it down. It’s nice, it’s concise. Guys. I think you’ll get a lot out of this. this is a podcast you need to hear just to really understand what’s happening in vet medicine.
So anyway, without further ado, let’s get into this.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome to the podcast, Sheri Gilmartin, how are you my friend?
Sheri Gilmartin: I am doing well. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s always a pleasure. You are one of my favorite people to talk to. You are so insightful about our industry. For those who don’t know you, I I tell you, I first had you on the podcast about two years ago, and it was because that’s when I first started to see you. You have this sort of like annual cycle of people who are like, Ooh, we’re looking a new year. Let’s see what Sheri Gilmartin thinks. And you, you’re at the conferences, you’re usually speaking about the trends that you see and things like that. You’ve become a, bit of an or a data-driven oracle, I would say, around the vet profession. You for those who don’t know you, I said you are the VP of sales at Vet Source.
You guys have you work with about 8,000 practices. The vast, vast, vast majority of them are general practices. Vet Source integrates with their PIM systems, whether you’re doing home delivery or you’re doing like data services or the vet to pet app, which is the loyalty app, which is great.
So you have all these, you have all these reasons to sort of interact with their data, and you have the ability to look at and sort of aggregate and, and sort of de-identify data. But look at. What is actually happening at these 8,000 practices? And when you think about, you know, there’s probably about 30,000 vet practices in, in the United States, so 8,000 is a, is a big chunk. And so anyway, I think that there’s always a lot of interest around what do you kinda see? What are you looking at? I think you’ve always done a wonderful job of looking at, the big picture and pulling out trends that are interesting and kind of pointing at where industry is going.
And you know, as we kinda make our way into 2025 here, I just wanna circle back around with you ’cause it’s been a little while since we talked and everything. Sheri, I, feel like there’s a lot of uncertainty in the world and it permeates into our profession. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out where. Where is America going? Where is the profession going? Where is business going in general? Where’s the economy going? All of those kinds of things. And I don’t, ask you to have answers to those things, but I really would like to hear your insights as a lot of us kinda look around and say, where, what is the next year gonna be like?
What’s the next five years gonna be like? What, can you start to talk at kind of a high level about where you see the profession going?
Sheri Gilmartin: Yeah. Thank you for that. And thank you for the warm welcome. I appreciate that. I appreciate the kind words. It’s, it I’m very passionate about this industry, so to bring insights to others like yourself where we can look at trends and then have a conversation about them and what we think is happening is, is something that is very important to me.
You know, we do have access to a lot of insights. And so aggregating and de-identifying the data from the practices that we serve to bring these insights to everybody in the industry, our customers and our partners so that we can stay ahead of them, right? That is the goal. It’s to provide the insights so that we have a clear understanding of, you know, how things are looking, and then where do we need to take action.
And so helping practices to be proactive, to be successful. So appreciate the conversation with the data that we have. You know, we look at things at the average per practice. So with the average practice is experiencing it being the average, there are some that are overperforming and some that are underperforming.
So, just note that, you know, we’re looking at the average per practice. We’re not looking at projections where we’re trying to gauge the industry as a whole, but
it’s just, you know, the average small business. The other thing I’ll say is, you know, the data gives us a view into what is happening, why it is happening, is another story, and that that’s harder to get at.
And so when we share some of the numbers, just want to make sure that, you know, we think about, okay, this is what is happening. There’s probably three or four dif different reasons why, and that’s where we, we have to, you know, have conversations with others like yourself in the industry that, that we can, you know.
Put together a hypothesis and then we can dig in further with the data to really understand why. So, I say all that, you know, the trends have been pretty consistent for the past, I would say year 12 to 18 months. We’re continuing to see a decline in visits. And a visit is any invoice in a practice. So really just overall volumes.
With that said, it does seem to be plateauing a bit, so we’ve been hovering around that two to two and a half percent year over year decline in visits and and volumes. What we are seeing is that the revenue per practice, that growth is starting to slow down as well.
So we ended 2024 with a 3.3% increase in revenue year over year.If we look back to the end of 2023, it was at about 5% so that decline in revenue is continuing. And so, you know, practices have pulled back a bit on price increases in 2024. Trying to reduce price increases that is certainly a factor to the revenue slowdown. More of a decline in, in volumes, certainly contributing to that.
And then it also could be, while the volumes in terms of visits are starting to plateau, it could be that when people are coming in, they’re having fewer services. And so, you know, a reduction in just revenue per visit as well.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. So when you say we’re seeing sort of a plateau in the decline, are you saying that we’re moving towards a 0% decrease or are you saying we are moving towards stabilizing at a 2% loss year over year, where we could the gambling man might continue to bet on a 2% reduction year over year? So which of those are you sort of saying.
Sheri Gilmartin: The latter for
Dr. Andy Roark: The latter. Okay. That’s not what I was hoping I was hoping you were saying. It’s plateauing. I’m like, great. Plateaus are good. Not when they plateau onto a downward slope.
Sheri Gilmartin: Yes, I mean, there was a time where we were seeing a steady, you know, a steeper decline. And so, you know, seeing it remain, you know, consistent in that native two year over year is an improvement from where we were a year ago.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. when you sort of look at this, I mean, are there. Are there any pieces of the puzzle that look a little different than they have in previous years? So I, I guess I’m kind of looking for, we continue to see the story of visits going down practices staying profitable because they’ve been raising prices.
Sounds like elasticity on price increase. We knew that that was gonna run out at some point. You can’t keep raising prices on people over and over again. I have them notice, especially when prices of everything else is going up. Things are getting sort of tight, I think for your. For your average, you know, grocery shopper. are there changes that you’re seeing? Are there bright spots? Are there types of practices that are maybe outperforming other types of process practices in general categories?
Sheri Gilmartin: Yeah, good question. So there’s two things that are, that stick out to me in the data. And the first is we did a comparison of independently owned practice versus corporately owned practices.
And so comparing independence versus groups, and we are seeing that independent practices have less of a decline in visits and more of an increase in revenue.
So their revenue’s at about a 5% increase year over year and their visits are down about 1.2%. So we are seeing the, the independence outperform in terms of visits in revenue. And the other area that is sticking out is cats. Actually feline patients are up 1.2% year over year compared to canine patients that are down 3.4%, which comparing this, these numbers with some of the, the surveys around pet adoption and new pets you know, reading that people are opting for cats or small dogs and adoptions are down overall come year over year, but that aligns with, of those people that are getting patients. We’re seeing an increase in feline patients. Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark: Well, I mean, we’ve said forever that we wanna do a better job of getting cats in. So I, that’s small victories. I, again, I’m a perpetual optimist. I like to find the, silver linings.
Sheri Gilmartin: That’s good.
Dr. Andy Roark: You said you know, at the beginning you said, you know, there’s the what’s happening and there’s the why it’s happening. Do you have any insight as to what what might be driving independent practices, slower decline versus the corporate groups?
Sheri Gilmartin: Yep. So these are theories. Again, harder to get into the why. You know, it could be related to price increases.
Um, It could be that corporately owned practices were more proactive with price increases and took price increases earlier, potentially impacting visits. It may be that in 2025, you know, independents were just later with the price increases, they catch up.
Maybe they start to see more of a, a decline in volume in 2025. It’s hard to tell, but that is one hypothesis. the second is you know, it could be staffing and capacity challenges. If we think back to three years ago, COVID practices were super busy. There was competition for labor and corporate groups were offering signing bonuses, things like that.
It could be that Those, incentives now have reached their, you know, two to three year mark and we’re seeing more turnover, again, a hypothesis. And it could be a customer service client bonding situation. there’s a, a lot of people that theorize that the culture in an independent practice and that relationship with a client is more personal.
And so that be, it could be a contributing factor.
Dr. Andy Roark: Okay. Sheri, if I came to you and I was like. I’m gonna start a vet practice, Sheri what advice do you have for me? What best practices would you give to me starting a vet practice today? What would you say, sort of looking at the information that you have, would you or there things you would say, Andy, well make sure you do this or make sure you do that, or consider, or this approach?
Yeah, just say, I am starting from scratch right now. What advice would you give to me?
Sheri Gilmartin: Well, that’s fun to think about because isn’t it fun to think about starting something from Oh, You have no tech debt, no. You know, staffing, like you’re just starting from scratch. That would be a lot of fun. first and foremost leveraging all of the, technology and the tools that are available to practices today automate as much as you can, really drive efficiency in the practice.
When you’re starting from scratch, there’s an advantage there because you just start off using those things and you don’t have to worry about implementation and, making changes in the practice. But efficiency is key for practices. The other thing that’s critical there is a focus on customer service.
I, I really believe that practices that focus on customer service, make it easy for clients to do business with you, make it easy for them to care with their patients. They’re gonna be more successful. And so if you’re starting a practice and you’re implementing online booking platforms, you’re, implementing texting as a primary means of communication.
You know, all of these things that make it easy for your staff and easy for your pet owners. I think that that would be really important as you think through, you know, what is this customer experience gonna be.
Dr. Andy Roark: Is there a type of practice or a size of practice that you would bet on? If I could magic wand, have a practice, would you say, Ooh, Andy, you want one? That you, a mobile practice is gonna be a great bang for your buck. Or you say, oh, companion exclusive, you know, stay away from mixed animal. Or would you say you know, a three vet practice is a nice profitable practice.
You know, things like that. are there categories like that, that you look at that you would say, well, these specific categories tend to punch above their weight class.
Sheri Gilmartin: so looking at the data, we for sure see smaller practices outperforming,
and again, I think it comes back to culture and the opportunity to build a stronger bond with the pet owners, make the experience more personalized. Could also be that they are younger, newer practices that have implemented a lot of the tools that we have to create, you know, a, a more automated, convenient experience for pet owners.
So we do see them, them outperforming you know, but we see all types of practices.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah,
Sheri Gilmartin: Be successful, right? There’s all these different niches and I think really just focusing on the customer and making it easy for them is the most important.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. When you look at overall economic trends in America. Are there trends that you think or I don’t know, are there areas of concern out there that you think are gonna have a significant impact? You know, there’s a lot of talk about tariffs, for example, and I, you know, at first I thought, you know, I don’t know how much this is gonna impact vet practices.
And then I sort of looked into it a little bit and, a lot of our pharmaceuticals come from outside of the US or a lot of ingredients for our pharmaceuticals come from outside the US and there’s a lot of red tape around changing your suppliers and things like that. And so I, I’m just kinda looking at those things.
Do you have storm clouds up ahead that you’re paying particular attention to?
Sheri Gilmartin: Yeah, so there is definitely a lot of unknowns in terms of how this year is gonna go with the tariffs and the economy. And I do think that without a doubt it’s going to impact veterinary practices. Also, looking at, you know, layoffs, government layoffs. If you’re in an area where there are a lot of government employees, how is that gonna impact the veterinary practices in that area?
Interesting. What I, I’m looking at, we look at, you know, as I said the decline in visits is an average per practice. Practice.
We broke the practices into quartiles to look at the top 25% of practices in terms of those that have been able to maintain visits and the top 25% of practices. They actually had a 10% growth in visits year over year.
And when you look at the average client transaction for those practices, it was a 0.14% increase year over year compared
Dr. Andy Roark: Okay.
Sheri Gilmartin: to the bottom 75%. That was at a 3.5% increase. An average client transaction. So again, we can’t pinpoint the why, but we can question to say, are these practices segmenting the invoice?
Are they working with the pet owners better to understand how much they can afford to pay in that visit. And is that if, if we’re keeping the average client transaction more stable, is that gonna drive more, more volume? Our business, the veterinary business is dependent on pet owner disposable income.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yes. Yeah, it is.
Sheri Gilmartin: so we have to be able to work with that where we are with the economy and be able to meet pet owners where they are and work with them if they need to break things out understand what they can and cannot do. Focus on a spectrum of care and be able to, to do the best we can with what the pet owner can do.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, you it sounds like you really integrate the spectrum of care with the customer service and sort of, paying attention to what the clients want and what they’re able to do, sort of as a holistic sort of, I dunno, customer service, medical delivery approach. Is that an accurate assessment?
Sheri Gilmartin: It is, and I say that, you know, looking at the industry and looking at the data and also me as a pet owner and how I am when I go and, you know, I’m lucky and I can afford care for my pet, but I still make my own decisions based on my own philosophies. And, you know, I think about, I brought my cat in with a cough and we did an x-ray and my cat had a mass and, you know, veterinarian appropriately was talking to me about, you know, doing diagnostics to understand what it was.
But for me as a pet owner, it wasn’t gonna change what I was gonna do, and so I didn’t need a diagnosis.
And so that’s where I think about the spectrum of care, not just from a, a financial perspective, but understanding my expectations and my needs.
Dr. Andy Roark: No, I, I think you’re, I think you’re right. I think this is I think these are good, healthy conversations. I think, we’re all sort of adapting to the way that the world is going. People don’t have endless resources and, you know, the cost of care continues to go up. And especially I look at specialty care and I go, wow, these. These are not the prices I was quoting, you know, five years ago. And I get it. I’m not trying to be critical, but it just is what it is. I think people are gonna kind of run into those, into those realities, and I think our, the better we are at sort of addressing them and maintaining trust with pet owners while we navigate the fact that things are more expensive, I, I think that’s gonna be an increasingly important skill for veterinarians and vet techs to have. Sheri, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for sharing with me. I always appreciate your insight. I, next year I want you to bring better news if you can. Like, I’d really like to hear more about growth and pets coming back in. If you could work on that, that would be ideal. So just, just, yeah, just my request for next year. Like, make the data, say that for me please.
Sheri Gilmartin: Okay, take care of it.
Dr. Andy Roark: Excellent. Thank you so much. Where can where can people find you online?
Sheri Gilmartin: We do have our free industry tracker on vet source.com, so you can go and you can track revenue and visits across practices. You can reach me personally on LinkedIn at Sheri Gilmartin. I’m happy to talk more about trends with, anyone in the industry.
Dr. Andy Roark: Outstanding. Thanks su so much for that. I’ll link up everything in the show notes, so guys, you can go check it out there. Sheri, thanks for being here guys. Thanks for tuning in everybody. Take care of yourselves gang.
And that’s what I got guys. Thanks for being here. Thanks to Sheri for making time. I really appreciate it. Guys, thanks to Vet Source sharing the data and the information that they’re bringing together. It’s super helpful just to understand what’s going on, gang.
If you enjoyed the episode, if you enjoy any of the episodes. You can always do me a favor by leaving me an honest review wherever it gets your podcast. It means the world to me. It’s how people find the show. It’s a, it’s just a nice thing, you know, we should all look for nice things to do that don’t take a lot of time and effort.
I can think of one, you could write an honest review of the podcast unless you hate it. And then the nice thing is not writing an honest review of the podcast. And I would accept that as well. Anyway, I’m just, I don’t think I’m gonna be done here. Gang, take care everybody. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.
