How AmeriVet’s CEO Is Scaling 700 DVMs Across 200+ Sites | Jason Heffelfinger
The veterinary industry is growing at 2% annually. Visits per pet are down. Digital marketing costs are climbing. Yet AmeriVet Veterinary Partners is outpacing the market.
Our Guest: Jason Heffelfinger is CEO of AmeriVet Veterinary Partners, a PE-backed group with 700 DVMs and over 200 sites across the US. Before AmeriVet, Jason spent nearly 10 years leading pet services at Petco and served as CEO of Dental Care Alliance.
The Problem: Vet industry consolidation sits around 30%. Independent and PE-backed operators face declining visit frequency, wage inflation, rising digital acquisition costs, and integration debt from the pandemic boom. Most multi-site operators add locations without the platform to support them.
The Solution: Jason’s playbook centers on three things: earn provider trust before executing strategy, focus on the one metric that matters most (new client acquisition), and build the platform before scaling. AmeriVet spent 2025 and the first half of 2026 migrating to a single PIMS, unifying their tech stack, and removing booking friction before ramping acquisitions in the back half of 2026.
Key Insights:
New CEOs lose organizations by leading from a distance. Jason shared his cell number company-wide in his first three weeks and flew nearly every week for six months to visit practices.
When the industry isn’t growing, the only move is taking share. AmeriVet’s first-year focus was on aggressive new-client acquisition, not on price increases.
The CIO is the most undervalued executive in PE-backed healthcare rollups. As technology drives operational efficiency, the wrong CIO limits growth.
The $100K EBITDA opportunity isn’t a strategic initiative. It is cutting waste on the back end and asking your practice teams where the friction is. At 50 locations, that is $2K per practice, and Jason says the teams will find more than that.
Tune in to learn how AmeriVet is tackling new client acquisition, lapsed client re-engagement, DVM retention, pharmacy compliance, and organic growth in a market where visits per pet are declining.
Full conversation on Healthcare100.
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