Built With Heart: Why Two Veterinarians Walked Away from corporate to Build their own hospital

For years, Dr. Lindsey Thomas and Dr. Valerie Carril worked inside large corporate and private equity veterinary systems. They saw the good parts — modern medicine, growth, expansion, access to advanced tools — but over time, they also began to feel the weight of a system increasingly driven by numbers instead of relationships.

• Appointment slots became shorter
• Schedules became tighter
• Prices climbed higher every few months
• And the time they needed to truly care for patients kept shrinking.

“We didn’t leave because we stopped loving veterinary medicine. We left because we loved it too much to keep practicing it that way.”
— Dr. Lindsey Thomas

Instead of finishing their days feeling fulfilled, they often found themselves staying up late completing medical records from home — charting for hours after dinner, trying to keep up with a pace that no longer felt sustainable.

So they made a decision:
They would build the kind of veterinary hospital they wished existed.

“We wanted to create a hospital where appointments didn’t feel like a stopwatch, Where doctors could actually sit down, listen, explain options, and build relationships with families.”
— Dr. Valerie Carril

Healing Paws Veterinary Center was created around one core idea: Give doctors the time and flexibility to practice good medicine.

That means:

• 30-minute appointments as a standard
• Longer visits for complex medical cases
• Thoughtful scheduling with built-in breathing room
• Time to educate clients without feeling rushed
• A calmer, lower-stress experience for pets and people alike

“We wanted to create a hospital where appointments didn’t feel like a stopwatch, Where doctors could actually sit down, listen, explain options, and build relationships with families.”
— Dr. Valerie Carril

One of the biggest frustrations both doctors experienced in corporate medicine was seeing clients decline diagnostics or treatment because costs had become out of reach.

Over time, they began seeing a painful pattern:

• Pets weren’t getting less sick
• Clients weren’t caring less
• The care was simply becoming harder to afford.

Healing Paws was built with the intention of balancing high-quality medicine with thoughtful pricing and transparency, helping families make informed decisions without feeling overwhelmed or pressured.

The goal wasn’t simply to make veterinary care feel nicer.
It was to make it better.

“Every few months there seemed to be another price increase, Lab costs went up. Client invoices went up. We wanted to bring veterinary medicine back into a more accessible range, Because when care becomes too expensive, everyone loses — especially the pets.”
— Dr. Valerie Carril

When they finally decided to open their own hospital, Dr. Thomas and Dr. Carril poured themselves into every detail.

• The floorplan
• The workflow
• The lighting
• The exam rooms
• The treatment area
• The equipment selection
• Even the overall design aesthetic.

Every choice was intentional.

Behind the scenes, the layout was designed to improve both patient care and staff wellbeing — creating smoother workflows, reducing stress, and giving the team the tools and environment they needed to do their best work.

“We wanted the hospital to feel calm, Not cold or corporate. We wanted clients to feel welcomed the second they walked through the door. This isn’t just a business to us, It’s our life’s work.”
— Dr. Lindsey Thomas

Healing Paws Veterinary Center represents something deeply personal:
Two veterinarians choosing to take back control of how medicine is practiced.

Not for growth targets.
Not for investor expectations.
But for patients, families, and the teams providing the care.

“We built the hospital we always wished we could work in, A place where medicine comes first, where relationships matter, and where people feel genuinely cared for..”
— Dr. Valerie Carril

And for the doctors behind Healing Paws, that mission is simple:

Practice medicine with more time.
More intention.
And more heart.