After 23 years as a practicing veterinarian, I realized that fewer younger veterinarians were interested in owning a practice, the financial demands, and administrative complexity of running a modern-day hospital. In 1997, I started buying clinics from retiring veterinarians who stayed on to spend their time doing what they loved - practicing medicine. Taking on someone’s veterinary clinic was a responsibility my team and I did not take lightly. We strived to build a doctor-centric veterinary community where veterinarians thrive by giving teams the time to focus on pets, their families and advancing medicine in collaboration with other veterinarians, while NVA took on administrative tasks like accounting, taxes, and payroll. And we believed the best medicine is practiced when local veterinarians craft their own medical approach, so when a hospital joined NVA, we kept the culture, people, and the name intact.

Having handed the reins of NVA to my friend, Greg Hartmann, I am retired but still active at NVA sharing our founding vision with veterinarians and our NVA family. I could not be more proud of what we started in 1997 and who NVA is today.