If you’re a veterinarian in Canada thinking about your next career move, you may be wondering, “Should I become a locum, remain an associate, or open my own vet hospital?”

While there’s no universally right answer, VetCircle’s goal is to help you make an informed decision by giving you an honest look at the realities, trade-offs, and opportunities of each pathway.

• Working as a locum DVM can offer excellent income, flexibility and freedom with time immediately. 
• Veterinary practice ownership gives you the opportunity to build a business, create equity and potentially achieve greater financial and time freedom later, but it often requires significantly more sacrifice upfront.

At VetCircle, we work with Canadian veterinarians exploring or starting practice ownership and one of the most important questions we help DVMs answer is: Is ownership actually right for me? Being a great veterinarian doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll enjoy being a practice owner, so let’s look at the reality of both paths.

The Reality of Being a Locum Veterinarian in Canada

Locum work can be an incredible career choice, particularly for veterinarians who value flexibility. Depending on demand in your area, you may be able to choose when you work, where you work and how much you work. You’ll also be able to negotiate a strong hourly, or daily rate, without taking on the financial and operational responsibilities of owning a veterinary hospital. And there is one enormous advantage, when your shift is over, it’s over! Whatever else goes on at the practice, generally isn’t your responsibility. You’re usually not the person worrying about payroll, staffing shortages, inventory, equipment repairs, marketing, HR issues or whether the practice generated enough revenue that month.

That freedom has real value.

If You Want Time Freedom Now, Locum Work May Be the Better Choice

If your priorities right now include travelling, raising a family, working fewer days, pursuing other interests or simply having the ability to leave work at work, becoming a locum veterinarian may be much better aligned with the life you want.

• You can work intensely for a period of time, and then take several weeks off.
• You can choose not to work weekends or evenings.
• You can reduce your schedule without worrying about whether the hospital generated enough revenue to cover its payroll, rent and operating expenses.
• When you’re not working, you’re also not managing a veterinary team or business.

For someone looking for immediate time freedom, that’s difficult to beat!

The Pros of Working as a Locum DVM

1. More control over your schedule.
   Depending on your area’s demand and the arrangements you accept, you typically have significant control over when, where and how much you work.
2. Strong immediate earning potential.
   An experienced veterinarian can make substantial personal income, without a lot of overhead. You can charge an hourly wage, plus travel costs and sometimes the hospital will even cover accomodation costs if you are coming from out of town. If you’re able to do surgeries and dentals, your hourly rate can be even higher!
3. Less management responsibility.
   You’re there to practise veterinary medicine, and take care of the patients that are booked with you during your shift.
4. Lower financial risk.
   Becoming a locum requires relatively little upfront investment. You’ll need to establish your business structure by working with a trusted accountant, maintain your professional licensing, and cover expenses such as transportation, work attire, insurance and continuing education. While these costs can add up, they are minimal compared with the capital required to open and operate a veterinary hospital.
5. Business Expense Deductions
   As a self-employed locum veterinarian, you may be able to deduct eligible business expenses from your business income, such as continuing education, eligible CE-related travel, professional licensing and dues, accounting fees, insurance, and qualifying work-related supplies or clothing. This can help reduce the taxable income generated by your locum business. Keep in mind that not every expense is deductible, so work with your accountant to determine what qualifies.
6. Exposure to different veterinary hospitals.
   Working in multiple practices can expose you to different teams, workflows, technologies, cultures and approaches to veterinary medicine.
7. The ability to leave work at work.
   For many veterinarians, this may be one of the greatest advantages of all. When you’re at work, you are working, but when you leave, there are rarely any instances where you’ll need to think about work.

The Cons of Working as a Locum DVM

Being a locum has it’s trade-offs too and the biggest limitations are:

1. You’re Exchanging Your Time for Income: If you aren’t working, your income also stops. You won’t get the benefit of paid vacation as a locum, since you’re self employed and will not be provided with any employee perks or benefits.
2. Limited Control Over the Hospital Environment: You may have significant control over when and where you work, but less control once you arrive. As a locum, you’re stepping into someone else’s team, staffing model, equipment, workflows, protocols, pricing and culture, and you’ll need to adapt to how that hospital operates.
3. No Employee Benefits: As a self-employed locum veterinarian, you won’t receive the traditional employee compensation package that may come with an associate DVM position. This can include extended health and dental benefits, paid vacation, CE allowances, licensing and professional dues, uniforms, production bonuses, staff discounts, retirement benefits and other practice-specific perks. Instead, you’ll need to factor these costs into your locum rate and manage many of these expenses through your own business. It’s also important that your working relationship genuinely reflects self-employment. The CRA looks at the entire working relationship including control over your work, financial risk, opportunity for profit, tools and equipment, ability to work for multiple hospitals, and whether you receive benefits normally associated with employment. Simply calling yourself a “locum” or “independent contractor” does not determine your status. If the CRA determines that the relationship is actually employer-employee rather than self-employed, there can be tax, CPP and EI implications for both you and the practice. (⁠Canada)
4. No Opportunity to Build Business Equity: While locums can still build significant personal wealth through strong earnings and investing, locum work itself doesn’t build equity in the veterinary practices you work in or create a hospital asset you can eventually sell. Practice ownership offers the opportunity to build both income and long-term business equity.

The Reality of Being a Veterinary Practice Owner in Canada

If You’re an Exceptional Producer, Ownership May Not Be Your Best Financial Move

One of the most important things to understand before opening a practice is that being a great DVM doesn’t automatically make you a great practice owner. You may be efficient, practise great medicine, communicate well with clients and generate significant revenue, making you think, “Why not do this for myself?”

But ownership requires a very different skill set. If you’re an exceptional producer, opening your own hospital could mean taking 10, 15 or 20+ hours each week away from what you do best, practising medicine and producing, and putting those hours toward something entirely different… MANAGEMENT.

Practice ownership requires you to lead, motivate and develop a team, not just manage yourself. Before choosing ownership, ask yourself:

• Can you delegate instead of doing everything yourself?
• Can you motivate people who work, and think, differently than you do?
• Can you clearly communicate expectations and hold people accountable?
• Can you coach and repeatedly train someone without becoming frustrated?
• Can you navigate difficult conversations?
• Most importantly, can you develop people to become even better than you?

While you don’t need to be a great manager from day one, you must be willing to learn and develop those leadership skills.

If the idea of managing, coaching and developing people sounds more exhausting than rewarding, ownership may not be for you. Depending on your goals, you might be happier negotiating with your current practice for profit sharing, a stronger production bonus and a clinical schedule that better fits your lifestyle, then intentionally saving and investing the additional income you earn.

Practice ownership doesn’t have to be the next financial step simply because you’re a successful DVM. Sometimes the better path is recognizing what you’re exceptionally good at and building your compensation and lifestyle around it.

If you do enjoy leading people, want to build a business and are still thinking, “Practice ownership sounds like me,” keep reading, because the next thing to understand is what it realistically takes to build a veterinary hospital.

The Reality of Starting a Veterinary Hospital

If you do choose veterinary practice ownership, you need to understand the trade you’re making. Instead of minimizing responsibility, you’re deliberately taking on more of it.

• You’re taking on financial risk.
• You’re becoming responsible for other people’s livelihoods.
• You’re building a team.
• You’re creating systems.
• You’re managing a business.

While practice ownership comes with significant responsibility, it also comes with opportunities and rewards that can make the investment worthwhile.

The Pros of Owning a Veterinary Hospital

Veterinary practice ownership offers something fundamentally different from just earning money:

1. You have the opportunity to build an asset: A locum veterinarian primarily earns money through their own clinical labour. A veterinary practice owner can eventually build a hospital where revenue is generated through an entire team of veterinarians, RVTs, veterinary assistants and client-service representatives. Instead of only asking: “How much can I personally produce?” You can eventually ask: “What can my hospital produce?” If your veterinary hospital becomes profitable, well-managed and transferable, the business itself may eventually have value to another buyer. That’s the fundamental financial difference between earning income and building equity.
2. Greater Earning and Growth Potential: As a practice owner, your earning potential is no longer limited by how much you can personally produce. As you build your team and grow the hospital, the business can generate revenue beyond your own clinical hours. If you eventually reach the capacity of one location, you can choose to expand, add services or even open additional locations giving you significantly more opportunity for long-term growth! Don’t open a second location until your first can run without you. Having a successful first hospital doesn’t mean you should expand. Only add another location if you’ll be able to work and dedicate most of your time in your new location. Otherwise, you risk splitting your single production between 2 practices, while doubling your overhead and management responsibilities. Before adding another location, maximize your first by building a reliable DVM team and strong systems that allow the hospital to run without you. Most importantly, you need to be replaceable before you expand.
3. You Build the Hospital You Want to Work In: As a practice owner, you get to decide what kind of hospital you want to build. You can shape the facility, culture, standard of medicine, client experience, technology, equipment, services, workflows and how your team works together. If you’ve spent years thinking, “There has to be a better way to do this,” ownership gives you the opportunity to actually change it. You can invest in the equipment you believe in, create more efficient workflows, build the team culture you want and establish standards that reflect how you believe veterinary medicine should be practised. 
4. You Build and Develop Your Own team: As a practice owner, you have the opportunity to intentionally build a team that aligns with your hospital. You can hire people who share your values, develop their strengths and create clear expectations for how you want your team to work together. As the hospital grows, you also get to create opportunities for other people to grow with you. An assistant can become an RVT, an RVT can move into leadership, an associate DVM can develop a special interest, and team members can take on responsibilities they never would have had elsewhere! Eventually, your success as an owner becomes less about what you can accomplish individually, and more about how many people you can help become exceptional at what they do.
5. You Have More Control Over Your Future: As a practice owner, you have more control over the direction of your career and your business. You’re no longer dependent on another person deciding your compensation, schedule, staffing levels, equipment purchases, services offered or how the hospital should grow. You decide where to reinvest profits, when to hire another team member, what technology and equipment are worth investing in, and what opportunities you want to pursue. Most importantly, you’re building towards your own long-term goals. Whether you want to reduce your clinical hours, focus on leadership, grow a multi-DVM hospital, stay a single-DVM hospital, expand to another location or eventually sell the practice, you have the ability to intentionally build the business around the future you want.
6. You Control Your Income Strategy: As a practice owner, your income is no longer limited to your salary or personal DVM production. As the hospital becomes profitable, you can benefit from the performance of the entire business including revenue generated by your associate DVMs, team and services. You also have more control over how money is reinvested into the business. Legitimate business expenses such as staff training and CE, professional fees, software, marketing, equipment, technology and eligible business travel can generally be paid and deducted by the business when they meet CRA requirements, rather than being paid personally with after-tax dollars. Depending on your business structure and circumstances, you may also have flexibility in how you compensate yourself and retain or reinvest profits within the business. Work with your accountant to structure compensation and expenses appropriately and ensure they meet CRA requirements.
7. Ownership Can Eventually Create a Different Kind of Freedom: The goal isn’t to work 60 or 70 hours per week forever, the goal is to work extremely hard for a period of your career to build something that eventually requires less of you. f you spend 5 years creating a practice where every decision still requires you, every employee reports directly to you and every problem becomes your problem, you don’t own a business… you’ve just created a very demanding job for yourself. You may own the practice, but it still owns your time… If instead you spend those years developing people, documenting systems, building leadership, creating financial controls and establishing a healthy business that can operate without your constant involvement, you’ve built something very different. Eventually, you’ll be able to reduce your clinical days, your manager can manage, your team can train, your systems can operate, your associate veterinarians can produce, and your veterinary practice can continue functioning while you’re away. But you must build that freedom, it won’t happen automatically.

The Cons of Owning a Veterinary Hospital

1. Veterinary Practice Ownership Means Having Two Jobs

When veterinarians imagine opening their own hospital, they often picture practising medicine, just in a hospital they own. The reality is that medicine becomes only part of the job, you’re now both a veterinarian and a business owner. Particularly during the early stages of a startup practice, be prepared to spend 20+ hours per week outside of your regular clinical responsibilities working on your business. Those hours may include:

• Recruiting, interviewing and hiring
• Onboarding and training
• Scheduling and managing call-outs
• Coaching and performance management
• Handling team conflict
• Reviewing financial statements and KPIs
• Managing inventory and suppliers
• Creating workflows and SOPs
• Marketing and business development
• Dealing with the countless unexpected issues that arise when running a veterinary hospital

And those hours have to come from somewhere. They may come from evenings, weekends, personal time, family time and sometimes directly out of your clinical production.

As your hospital grows and you build the right team, systems and leadership structure, your involvement should eventually change. But especially in the beginning, don’t underestimate how much time it takes to build the business while also working in it.

2. You May Have Less Freedom Before You Have More

If you’re considering opening a veterinary hospital because you want more freedom, you need to understand an uncomfortable reality:

You’re probably going to have to give up some of your freedom first.

We believe prospective practice owners should approach ownership prepared to dedicate at least the first 5 years to intentionally building their business. That doesn’t mean every hospital magically becomes easy after 5 years. It means you should enter ownership with a long enough time horizon to build something properly.

There may be evenings spent working after appointments, weekends figuring out why something isn’t working, shifts you have to cover when someone unexpectedly leaves and family time sacrificed to keep the business moving. The goal is for that sacrifice to be temporary. You should be intentionally building a hospital that becomes less dependent on you over time.

3. Managing People Will Probably Be One of Your Hardest Jobs

You can control your equipment, pricing and systems, however people are much less predictable. Expect and prepare for difficult hires. Someone may interview incredibly well and turn out to be the wrong fit. You may spend months training someone who you need to terminate, or leaves on their own. A great employee may unexpectedly resign. You may have to manage conflict between 2 valuable team members or have a difficult performance conversation with someone you’ve become friends with. When you’re the owner, the people problems ultimately become your problems. You’ll need to learn how to hire for success (not just a body), set expectations, give feedback, manage conflict, hold people accountable and develop people into stronger versions of themselves.

Your success is no longer measured only by how well you perform, but by how well you can lead, develop and help your entire team perform.

4. You Take On the Financial Risk

As an associate or locum, you’re generally paid for the work you perform. As an owner, you’re responsible for making sure everyone else gets paid too. Opening a veterinary hospital can require significant upfront capital for renovations, equipment, inventory, technology, professional fees, deposits and working capital, often before you’ve built a consistent client base. And when revenue is lower than expected, your expenses don’t disappear. Payroll, rent, loan payments, inventory, software and equipment costs still need to be paid. There may even be periods, particularly during startup, when your employees take home more than you do because you’re reinvesting money into the business. Practice ownership can provide significant financial upside and the opportunity to build equity, but you earn that opportunity by taking on the financial risk that comes with owning the business. 

Locum vs. Veterinary Practice Owner

What matters to you?	Locum Veterinarian	Veterinary Practice Owner
Time freedom	Potentially more freedom immediately	Usually less initially; potential for more later
Work/Personal Schedule control	Often high	Business needs can dictate your schedule initially
Clinical focus	Primarily veterinary medicine	Medicine + leadership + business
Management responsibilities	Generally limited	Significant
Managing and coaching employees	Limited	Core part of the job
Upfront financial risk	Relatively low	Significant
Immediate earning potential	Can be excellent	May be reduced during startup/growth
Income tied to your clinical hours	Primarily yes	Can become less dependent on your own production
Control over hospital systems	Limited	High
Control over hospital culture	Limited	High
Building a team	Limited	Central to your success as an owner
Building business equity	None	Potentially significant
Business that can eventually be sold	None	Potentially yes
Ability to leave work at work	Often much easier	Very difficult initially, but with well built systems in place, it can be done
Best suited to someone who…	Loves medicine and values flexibility	Enjoys medicine, leadership, people and business-building

There’s Also a Third Option: Locum First, Practice Owner Later

You don’t necessarily have to choose locum veterinarian OR veterinary practice owner today. Working as a locum can actually be a strategic step toward eventually opening or buying a veterinary practice in Canada. You might spend several years doing locum work while building savings for a future investment, experiencing different veterinary hospital models and workflows, learning which systems work, seeing different leadership styles, developing relationships within the veterinary community and determining what you would eventually want your own hospital to look like. You may ultimately discover that you love locum work and have no desire to own a veterinary hospital OR you may discover exactly what kind of veterinary practice you want to build!

Which Career Path Is Right for You?

If you’re trying to figure out which path makes more money, there isn’t a simple answer. A locum veterinarian could earn more than a struggling practice owner. A highly productive associate veterinarian with an excellent production bonus could earn more than some veterinary practice owners. A locum DVM who consistently saves and invests their income could build significant personal wealth. And a successful veterinary practice owner who builds a profitable, multi-doctor hospital may eventually generate income and equity beyond what they could personally produce clinically.

So instead of asking “Which career path makes the most money?” Ask yourself, “What do I actually want my job and my life to look like?”

If you love practising medicine and want control over when and where you work, there is nothing wrong with building an incredible career as a locum veterinarian or highly compensated associate DVM.

If you get excited about building teams, developing people, creating systems and growing something beyond yourself, veterinary practice ownership may be worth the sacrifice. But if you choose ownership, remember that the sacrifices you make in the beginning are supposed to be temporary. You may initially do all of the management, train every new hire, make every difficult decision and spend evenings and weekends working on the business. But throughout those early years, your goal should be to make yourself less necessary. Every person you develop, leader you create, system you document and responsibility you delegate should make the hospital less dependent on you. You’re sacrificing some time and freedom now to build a business that can eventually give them back to you. If, years later, the hospital still requires you to personally solve every problem and make every decision, you haven’t built a business that works for you, you’ve built yourself an incredibly demanding job. Because opening a veterinary hospital isn’t simply becoming a veterinarian who owns the building. You’re choosing a second career: business ownership. And you should want that career too.

Still Asking, “Is Veterinary Practice Ownership for Me?”

If you’ve made it this far and you’re still not sure, that’s completely reasonable since it’s a HUGE decision! VetCircle created the “Is Veterinary Practice Ownership for Me?” Self-Assessment to help veterinarians think through whether the realities of ownership actually align with their career goals, lifestyle and what they want for their future.

• ⁠TAKE THE “IS PRACTICE OWNERSHIP FOR ME?” SELF-ASSESSMENT

Not Sure What Your Next Step Should Be? Talk to VetCircle.

At VetCircle, we work with Canadian DVMs at different stages of the practice ownership journey, including veterinarians who aren’t yet sure whether ownership is what they actually want. We can sit down with you and talk through what you’re looking for from your career and your life.

• Do you want more time freedom? 
• Do you want to maximize your earning potential as a veterinarian? 
• Do you enjoy leading and developing people? 
• Do you want to build an independent veterinary hospital? 
• Would buying an existing veterinary practice make more sense than starting one? 
• Would you be happier as a locum DVM or highly compensated associate? 
• Or could locum work be the first step toward eventually becoming a veterinary practice owner?

Our goal isn’t to convince every veterinarian to become a practice owner, our goal is to help you understand what you want, what each path realistically requires and whether VetCircle can help you get there.

If you’re thinking about starting a veterinary practice in Canada, buying a veterinary hospital, becoming a practice owner or simply deciding whether ownership is right for you, we’d love to chat.

[BOOK A MEETING WITH MARIETTE FROM VETCIRCLE]

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