A Philadelphia company founded to address burnout and staffing shortage problems in the veterinary industry is embarking on a major expansion.
IndeVets, based in Center City, supplies veterinarians to animal hospitals along the East Coast with a business model that it designed to allow animal doctors to live saner lives.
Now the staffing company is getting ready to take its model national.
"Our vision is to provide this across the United States," said Michael Raphael, IndeVets founder and CEO. "We have a five-year plan to make that happen."
The company, which launched in 2017 and employs about 90 veterinarians, has already expanded into nine East Coast markets: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and the Washington, D.C. It's now in the process of adding North Carolina. Raphael declined, for competitive reasons, to discuss which markets are next.
IndeVets' business model, Raphael said, involves hiring veterinarians by offering "top-notch" pay, extensive benefits, and the ability to choose when and where they work. The company has developed a technology platform and app to make it easier for the doctors to decide when they want to work and where.
"Small veterinary hospitals are really small family businesses," Raphael said. "There are very few opportunities for veterinarians to pick their hours. With us they can pick the shift that works for them."
Animal hospitals pay IndeVets an hourly fee, based on where they are located, for the veterinarians it provides.
"Most of the time we're augmenting a team that is already in place, but there are a handful of places where we are the only doctors," Raphael said.
Raphael declined to disclose the privately owned company's revenues, but he did say the annual figure has consistently doubled as the company has expanded.
Raphael, a lifelong Philadelphian, spent the early part of his career as a journalist, working for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Newark Star-Ledger and the Associated Press.
"I loved being a journalist," he said. "I loved the research and figuring things out and understanding how things work — but I didn't love the writing."
He decided to make a mid-career switch and went back to college, graduating from the Fox School of Business at Temple University. He entered the business world investing in and operating companies in technology, media, health care, and veterinary medicine.
Prior to IndeVets he was part of a team that launched Community Veterinary Partners, which was sold in 2015, to consolidate veterinary practices and veterinary hospitals.
Their market research found about 90% of the more than 20,000 general veterinary practices and hospitals are individually owned. Raphael said he learned how stressed veterinarians were.
"A common theme was them talking about being overworked and burned out," he said. "There was a lot of dissatisfaction and frustration."
That sparked the idea for IndeVets.
One of the first veterinarians to join IndeVets was Dr. Marisa Brunetti, a Chester County native who serves as the company's chief medical officer.
"I can attest to everything Mike said about veterinarians feeling stressed and burned out," said Brunetti, who continues to practice as a part-time veterinarian. "Most veterinarians are type A personalities and very driven. We like to do things as well as we can. … It's hard to turn away an animal. We try to see as many as we can, and that leads to compassion fatigue.
"You end up on call all the time with no boundaries. I worked too many hours, and saw too many patients," she said. "I wanted to help as many patients as I could and felt bad when I couldn't. At IndeVets you always have boundaries."
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, Brunetti went into private small animal practice. She spent a year as a regional medical director for a veterinary company in Texas before moving back to Pennsylvania in 2018, when she joined IndeVets.
As the company's chief medical officer, she sees her role as "supporting my doctors’ practice of medicine, nurturing client relations, and doing my part to improve the quality of life of veterinarians everywhere."
The need for veterinarians, Raphael said, has increased with the retirement of doctors who were part of the baby-boom generation and the increase in families getting pet companions while stuck at home during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Raphael said what they found is many of the company's veterinarians want to limit their hours to spend more time with family, while others work a lot of hours for several weeks at a time and then travel. One worked for a while then went to Alaska for a month to train sled dogs for the Willow 300 race.
Among the benefits the company provides to full- and part-time veterinarians are health care and continuing education.
The company also provides its doctors with a "choose your own adventure" benefit where full-time employees get $1,500 a year (or $750 for part-time workers) to spend as they want for mental health support or other needs. Examples of how people have used the benefit include gym memberships, mindfulness apps and commuting costs.
