Selling Your Veterinary Practice to Veterinary Innovative Partners: A Vet’s 2026 Guide

Key takeaways

• Veterinary Innovative Partners (VIP) is veterinarian-owned and veterinarian-operated by its four founders, with Health Enterprise Partners as the private-equity sponsor through its HEP III fund. The earlier rumor that VIP is owned by Innovatus Capital was not confirmed by any source.
• VIP was formed in July 2021 to combine four multi-hospital veterinary businesses its founders had owned separately. As of 2025 it ran nearly 70 hospitals across 12 states.
• The doctor-led model is the through-line. Three of the four founders actively practice medicine, acquired practices keep their legacy names, and the platform emphasizes hospital-level autonomy and partnership support, per Health Enterprise Partners.
• Chris Bishop became CEO in November 2023, and VIP added a first COO and a Chief Medical Officer in 2024, signaling a buildout of professional operating infrastructure alongside the founders.
• The most reliable way to learn what VIP, or any major buyer, would actually pay for your specific practice is to run a structured competitive process. We call ours the Elite Selling System: we hand-select and vet every buyer who gets to bid, the way a doorman with a velvet rope lets in only the right people, then run a private bidding window inside that vetted group. When VIP bids against a curated group of qualified competitors, the terms reliably look different from a direct, single-bidder conversation.

When a vet hands me an offer from Veterinary Innovative Partners and asks what to make of it, the first thing I do is reframe the question they’re really asking. They usually open with “what kind of company is this?” But VIP is not the kind of buyer you can size up with a single label.

It’s PE-backed and doctor-led at the same time, and that combination shapes everything downstream, from who’s actually in the room when you negotiate to what your practice life looks like three years after you sign.

So this is the picture I’d lay out over dinner. Who owns VIP, how the doctor-led model actually works, how big the platform is and where it operates, what the company offers selling veterinarians, and where the real negotiation leverage sits when you’re selling your veterinary practice to Veterinary Innovative Partners.

A short, honest answer first. VIP is a veterinarian-owned, veterinarian-operated platform backed by Health Enterprise Partners, a healthcare-focused private equity firm.

It was built in 2021 from four founders’ practices and has grown to nearly 70 hospitals across 12 states. It keeps acquired practices’ names and leans hard on autonomy and partnership in its pitch to sellers.

Whether that adds up to the right deal for you depends far less on VIP’s general posture than on the specific terms you negotiate, and on whether VIP knows other qualified buyers are bidding for the same practice.

Who owns Veterinary Innovative Partners? Founders plus Health Enterprise Partners

The cleanest way to describe VIP’s ownership is a doctor-led platform with a private equity sponsor behind it. VIP is veterinarian-owned and veterinarian-operated by its four founders, and the financial sponsor is Health Enterprise Partners, through its HEP III fund.

VIP is listed as a current portfolio company on Health Enterprise Partners’ own site, and a second independent source, PrivateEquityInfo, also names Health Enterprise Partners as VIP’s private equity owner.

One housekeeping note, because it circulates in the market. An earlier hint that VIP was owned by Innovatus Capital Partners was not confirmed by any source I could find, and two independent sources point to Health Enterprise Partners instead.

So if you’ve seen the Innovatus name attached to VIP, treat it as stale.

The founders matter here in a way they don’t with most PE-backed groups. VIP describes itself as veterinarian-owned and veterinarian-operated, with three of its four founders actively practicing veterinary medicine and all four engaged in operations and growth, per Health Enterprise Partners.

Several public references identify the founding group as including Dr. Brett Shorenstein (VMD), Dr.

Don Costlow, Dr. Adam Ainspan, and co-founder Jay H.

Margolis. I’d verify the current founder roster against VIP’s own team page before relying on any one name, since the names here are assembled from secondary references rather than VIP’s primary listing.

This is a real distinction. Many PE-backed groups in this space are run by professional operators with capital partners standing behind them.

VIP’s pitch is that working veterinarians still own and run the platform, with private equity as the financial engine rather than the steering wheel. For a seller, that changes the texture of who you negotiate with and who you’ll answer to afterward.

How big is VIP? Hospital count, states, and footprint

As of 2025, VIP operated nearly 70 veterinarian-owned-and-operated hospitals across 12 states, per Health Enterprise Partners and press coverage. That footprint may have grown since the figure was reported, so treat it as a 2025 snapshot rather than a live count.

The growth path is worth understanding because it tells you how VIP buys. The platform was formed in July 2021 by combining four multi-hospital veterinary businesses that the founders had previously owned separately.

Early on, the platform was smaller, one formation-era snapshot from Health Enterprise Partners showed 33 hospitals across nine states, employing 116 veterinarians and 204 veterinary technicians.

Then came scale through acquisition. Before its largest deal, VIP had more than 37 hospitals across nine states.

In June 2024, VIP acquired Valley Veterinary Care, a group of 24 clinics across Texas, California, and Colorado, with financial terms not disclosed. That single transaction pushed the network to roughly 70 hospitals nationwide and added three new states.

The 12 states reflect VIP’s 2024-2025 footprint: Florida, Tennessee, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Texas, Colorado, and California. The eastern concentration came first; the western states arrived largely through the Valley deal.

If your practice sits inside or adjacent to that map, VIP can usually deliver regional density, shared services, and referral relationships more easily than in a market where it has no presence yet. To see how footprint fit shapes which buyers compete hardest for you, our guide on who to sell your veterinary practice to walks through the matching logic.

VIP’s doctor-led, veterinarian-owned model: how it’s positioned

VIP’s central message to selling veterinarians is consistent. The platform emphasizes hospital-level autonomy and partnership support, positioning the local veterinarian to stay in charge of the local hospital, per Health Enterprise Partners.

And acquired practices continue to operate under their legacy names after joining VIP, so the sign over your door and the brand your clients know typically stay put.

In its own words to sellers, VIP frames the deal as a way for veterinarians to benefit financially from selling their practice while keeping the career they love and leaving day-to-day operations to fellow veterinarians, opening the door to higher salaries and improved health-care and retirement plans, per VIP’s For Sellers materials. VIP also states that it has eliminated noncompete agreements for its veterinarians and offers competitive benefits, though I’d confirm both points on the live page before relying on them, since they come via search snippets of a page that blocked automated access.

Here’s how I read that positioning for a seller. The doctor-led story is genuine, three of four founders still practice, and the brand-preservation and autonomy themes are well-documented.

But positioning is not a contract. Every one of those appealing features, autonomy, brand preservation, benefits, the absence of a noncompete, only protects you to the extent it’s written into your definitive agreement.

The pitch tells you what VIP wants to be; the agreement tells you what you actually get.

What VIP offers sellers, and where the leverage sits

VIP does not publish a price sheet, and no responsible advisor will quote you a VIP-specific multiple, because what any buyer pays turns on your practice profile and whether other qualified bidders are at the table. What I can tell you is the market backdrop.

Across the PE-backed buyer pool, competitive outcomes for strong multi-doctor general practices in the $2 million-plus revenue range tend to land in the low-teens EBITDA range per industry M&A commentary. EBITDA here means what your practice earns in pure operating profit, before taxes and accounting choices; buyers multiply it by a multiple to set the price.

The deal structures in this market have shifted, too. The broader PE-backed market has moved measurably toward partnership and rollover equity arrangements, keeping a slice of ownership in the buyer’s new entity instead of taking all cash at close, often paired with an earnout, part of the price paid later only if the practice hits agreed targets.

VIP’s partnership-forward language suggests these structures are on the table, but whether you’re offered rollover, a partnership stake, or a more traditional structure is negotiated case by case. Our PE pricing guide breaks down the structure-by-structure tradeoffs.

A note on how the money actually moves at the end, because sellers worry about this. In these transactions the buyer wires the agreed funds directly to you at closing in a simultaneous exchange; the documents become effective once the wire is confirmed.

If there’s an indemnification holdback, that’s simply a portion of the price the buyer holds back and pays later to secure your promises in the agreement. It’s the buyer retaining funds, not money handed to an outside party.

Where does the leverage live with a doctor-led buyer like VIP? Less in the headline cash percentage and more in the terms that govern your post-sale life: the autonomy language, the brand-preservation commitment in writing, the earnout protective provisions, and the rollover terms if you take equity.

Those are exactly the dimensions a competitive process moves, because no buyer softens its standard template when it’s the only one in the room.

VIP’s leadership and acquisition track record

VIP has built out professional operating leadership alongside its founders. Chris Bishop was appointed CEO in November 2023; he previously led Regent Surgical Health, which he scaled to roughly 1,000 surgeons and about 100,000 patients per year across 15 partnerships and 35 locations. In 2024 the team expanded again, with Derek Walsh appointed as VIP’s first COO in October and **Dr.

Emily Hubbard** named Chief Medical Officer in August. In April 2025, VIP announced a partnership with VetRec, a veterinary AI assistant, a signal that the platform is investing in technology and support services for its hospitals.

On the acquisition side, the headline event is the June 2024 Valley Veterinary Care deal, 24 clinics across Texas, California, and Colorado, which roughly doubled the network and opened the western footprint. The pattern across VIP’s growth is consistent: combine established multi-hospital groups, keep their legacy names, and add operating infrastructure over the top.

For an owner reading 2026 outreach, that means you’re dealing with a buyer that is actively building a professionalized operating layer while keeping working veterinarians in ownership, not a static holding company and not a brand-consolidation machine.

How selling to VIP compares to a large strategic acquirer

The contrast most sellers have in mind is VIP against the large strategic acquirers. The clearest line is Mars Veterinary Health (VCA, Banfield, BluePearl), the family-owned corporate exception in this market, which has historically been more willing to transition acquired practices toward a network brand over time.

VIP sits on the other end of that spectrum: practices keep their legacy names, and the platform’s whole pitch is local veterinarians staying in charge of local hospitals.

Against the PE-backed buyer pool more broadly, VIP’s distinguishing feature is the working-veterinarian ownership at the top. Many PE-backed groups are run by professional operators; VIP’s three actively practicing founders are a genuine differentiator for a seller who wants doctors, not financiers, making the medicine-adjacent calls.

None of this means VIP is automatically the highest bidder or the best fit for your specific practice. It means VIP competes on a particular axis, doctor-led autonomy with brand preservation, that matters a great deal to some sellers and less to others.

That’s why I never let an owner evaluate VIP, or any single buyer, in isolation. The buyer pool is deep.

Our overview of veterinary practice consolidators lays out the field, and the only way to know which one pays and treats you best for your practice is to put the qualified ones side by side and let them bid in parallel.

What to negotiate before signing with VIP

Five priorities when you’re negotiating with VIP, ordered roughly by leverage.

Autonomy and decision rights, in writing. VIP’s positioning centers on hospital-level autonomy. Turn that positioning into contract language: define what clinical and operational decisions stay with you, and which migrate to the platform.

Marketing language about autonomy is not the same as a clause that protects it.

Brand preservation, in writing. Acquired practices typically keep their legacy names at VIP, which aligns with what you want. Still, get the practice name, signage, website, and marketing identity protected explicitly in the definitive purchase agreement rather than relying on the general pattern.

Rollover or partnership terms. If your VIP offer includes a retained stake, negotiate the mechanics that actually determine its value: the put/call windows tied to specific milestones, the formula price, governance and information rights, and anti-dilution protection. A partnership is only as good as its exit terms.

Earnout protective provisions. If any part of your price is contingent, protect the EBITDA base: no major operational changes without your consent during the earnout window, a working-capital floor, and a clear, written definition of what counts in the earnout calculation. Central decisions made above the hospital level can move practice-level EBITDA in either direction, so this is where contingent dollars get won or lost.

Noncompete and post-sale role. VIP states it has eliminated noncompetes for its veterinarians, which would be a meaningful seller-friendly term, so confirm whether that applies to your deal and get it in writing. Then pin down your post-sale role, compensation structure, and the length of any required commitment.

Should you take a VIP offer or run a competitive process?

For a doctor-led buyer like VIP, the value of a competitive process is concentrated in the terms that shape your life after closing, not just the headline number. A single bidder facing no visible competition has no structural reason to put forward its strongest autonomy language, its most explicit brand-preservation guarantee, its most flexible rollover terms, or its tightest earnout protections in the first conversation.

When VIP knows other qualified buyers are underwriting the same practice in parallel, those dimensions tend to move.

This is the mechanical reality across every major buyer in the market, including the seller-friendly ones. It isn’t a knock on VIP.

It’s simply how offers get calibrated to the room. The way to bring the rest of the field to the table in an organized, confidential way is the heart of what we do at Transitions Elite, and it’s why we built the sell-my-veterinary-practice process around a curated, competitive bidding window.

When we run that process for a VIP-eligible practice, we deconstruct VIP’s standard template against the comparable templates from the rest of the qualified buyer pool before any packet goes out. We invite only the buyers that genuinely compete with VIP for your specific practice, the brand-preservation and doctor-led platforms on one axis, the partnership-structure buyers on another, and we bring back full term sheets, not just headline numbers.

You then choose on the dimensions that matter to you: sometimes the doctor-led platform with the strongest autonomy story, sometimes the highest cash percentage, sometimes the best rollover.

The result holds across deal types. Practices in the qualifying revenue band that run a structured competitive process consistently clear materially better total economic outcomes than the same practice would have cleared by signing the original direct term sheet.

To ground the conversation in your own numbers, start with a clear view of what your practice is worth, our guide to valuing a veterinary practice shows you how.

What our Elite Selling System actually does

If you’ve received a VIP offer, or VIP’s team has reached out to open the conversation, the highest-leverage move is to understand how the rest of the qualified field would structure the same practice before you commit to anything. That’s the entire purpose of the Elite Selling System: we hand-select and vet every buyer who gets to bid on your practice, the way a doorman with a velvet rope lets in only the right people, then run a private bidding window inside that vetted group.

VIP is invited inside that rope on practices that fit its criteria. And when a doctor-led platform like VIP bids against a curated group of qualified competitors, the terms it puts forward, on autonomy, brand, rollover, and the earnout, are reliably different from what it would offer in a one-on-one conversation.

Get a Free Practice Value Estimate →

Send us the offer in your hand and we’ll decompose the terms, flag what’s typically negotiable, and project what your practice would likely clear in a structured competitive process with the broader qualified buyer pool. No upfront cost, no obligation.

And we only get paid when your deal closes, out of the value created above what you would have gotten on your own. Your interests and ours point in the same direction from the first conversation to the wire transfer at closing.

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Frequently asked questions

Who owns Veterinary Innovative Partners? VIP is veterinarian-owned and veterinarian-operated by its four founders, with Health Enterprise Partners as the private-equity sponsor through its HEP III fund. VIP is listed as a current portfolio company on Health Enterprise Partners’ site, and PrivateEquityInfo independently names Health Enterprise Partners as VIP’s private equity owner.

So the ownership is a doctor-led platform backed by a healthcare-focused private equity firm.

Is Veterinary Innovative Partners private equity owned? VIP is PE-backed and doctor-led at the same time. Health Enterprise Partners is the financial sponsor through its HEP III fund, while the four founders remain owners and operators, three of whom actively practice veterinary medicine.

That dual structure, professional capital paired with working-veterinarian ownership, is central to how VIP positions itself to sellers.

How many hospitals does Veterinary Innovative Partners have? As of 2025, VIP operated nearly 70 veterinarian-owned-and-operated hospitals across 12 states. The platform was formed in July 2021 from four separate businesses, and the 2024 acquisition of Valley Veterinary Care’s 24 clinics pushed the network from more than 37 hospitals to roughly 70.

The footprint may have grown since.

What states does Veterinary Innovative Partners operate in? VIP’s 2024-2025 footprint spans 12 states: Florida, Tennessee, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Texas, Colorado, and California. The Texas, California, and Colorado presence came largely through the 2024 Valley Veterinary Care acquisition.

Does Veterinary Innovative Partners let veterinarians keep autonomy after selling? VIP emphasizes hospital-level autonomy and partnership support and positions the local veterinarian to stay in charge of the local hospital, per Health Enterprise Partners. Acquired practices also keep their legacy names.

As with any buyer, the specific autonomy and brand commitments for a given deal live in the definitive purchase agreement and are worth negotiating into writing.

How much does Veterinary Innovative Partners pay for a veterinary practice? VIP does not publish a price sheet, and what any buyer pays depends most on the practice profile and whether other qualified bidders are at the table. Across the PE-backed pool, competitive outcomes for strong multi-doctor general practices in the $2 million-plus revenue range tend to land in the low-teens EBITDA range per industry M&A commentary.

A structured competitive process is the most reliable way to learn what VIP would actually pay for your practice.

Does Veterinary Innovative Partners offer rollover equity or partnership? VIP’s positioning centers on partnership, autonomy, and letting sellers benefit financially while keeping the career they love, per the company’s For Sellers materials. The broader PE-backed market has shifted toward partnership and rollover-equity structures, where the seller keeps a minority stake.

Whether VIP offers rollover equity, a partnership stake, or a more traditional structure on a given deal is negotiated case by case, so ask directly and get the put/call terms and exit mechanics in writing.

Who is the CEO of Veterinary Innovative Partners? Chris Bishop was appointed CEO in November 2023. He previously led Regent Surgical Health, scaling it to roughly 1,000 surgeons and about 100,000 patients per year across 15 partnerships and 35 locations.

VIP also added Derek Walsh as its first COO and Dr. Emily Hubbard as Chief Medical Officer in 2024.

Is Veterinary Innovative Partners a good buyer for my veterinary practice? VIP is an active 2026 buyer and a strong fit for doctors who want a doctor-led platform that preserves the local hospital name and local clinical leadership. The best way to evaluate it is head-to-head against a curated group of other qualified buyers in a competitive process, where each bidder underwrites your practice in parallel and you can compare full terms, not just the headline number.

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Sources

Buyer and private equity sponsor materials

1. Health Enterprise Partners. Veterinary Innovative Partners — portfolio company profile. hepfund.com
2. Health Enterprise Partners. Veterinary Innovative Partners Appoints Chris Bishop as New CEO. hepfund.com
3. PrivateEquityInfo. Veterinary Innovative Partners — private equity ownership directory. privateequityinfo.com
4. Veterinary Innovative Partners. For Sellers. vip-vet.com
5. Veterinary Innovative Partners. News and leadership announcements. vip-vet.com

Acquisition and deal coverage

6. CARE for Pets. Veterinary Innovative Partners Acquires Valley Veterinary Care. August 2024. pets.care
7. Business Wire. Veterinary Innovative Partners and Valley Veterinary Care Join Forces. June 2024. businesswire.com
8. Business Wire. Veterinary Innovative Partners Appoints Chris Bishop as New CEO. November 2023. businesswire.com

Industry M&A research and valuation context

9. Capstone Partners. Pet Sector M&A Update — 2026. Capstone Partners industry research.
10. Octus. Veterinary Services Roll-Up Coverage, 2025-2026. Octus credit research and industry commentary.