veterinary technician

veterinarian

veterinary assistant

customer service representative

general practitioner

Thrive Pet Healthcare

I found my current job as a veterinarian at Thrive Affordable Vet Care at a veterinary conference a little over 2 years ago at one of the information booths. After looking for a job change (at my previous job I was overworked, underpaid, not appreciated, was on 24/7 on call every other week and worked anywhere from 5-6 days a week, was treated poorly by the co-workers, etc...truly a toxic clinic environment). I interviewed shortly after the conference over the phone with Thrive as I was very impressed by the employees at the conference and was immediately impressed with the company - not only with the communication of the gal I interviewed with, but with what the company had to offer - amazing benefits, work-life balance, the work schedule, etc... In all honesty it seemed too good to be true. They offered me a job at a brand new clinic that was set to open a few months later and I quickly accepted. There is definitely a learning curve when transitioning to any new/different practice, but one of the most positive things was the electronic medical record keeping system (very glitchy in the beginning but has gotten better with the newer updates) for keeping up on notes. Immediately I was impressed with the clinic, the type of medicine that we are able to practice (doctors can decide what they want to do based on their comfort level and their skill set), the quality of blood work, x-ray, and dental machines, and the overall mission of the company. The vibe that the clinic tries to maintain is exceptional (I am sure that it varies from clinic to clinic) and teamwork between the employees is key as it is in any clinic, but Thrive tries to hire those who they feel will fit with the other employees on many levels. The company has always been so accommodating with any time off needed and there is never any expectation to take any unexpected shift above and beyond your scheduled work hours. The relief pay is great though if you do decide to pick up an extra shift. There is a call center that makes the appointments, so it is delightful to not have the phone ringing off the hook. The upper management visits us as often as they can (as most of our upper management lives outside of Utah), but they are always checking in with us to make sure that everything is going well and are always asking what they can do for us to make our work life the best it can be. I have always felt that they truly care about me as an individual as well as a doctor. I can count on one hand how many days I have not gotten a full lunch (1 hour) and that is definitely a priority of the company that we are not worked to death as so many veterinarians are. There is definitely a healthy balance of staying busy, helping pets, but also keeping your sanity. I cannot say enough positive things about Thrive and I absolutely love being employed with this company.

The concept of providing affordable veterinary care to pet owners, while allowing DVMs and paraprofessionals to work four day work weeks is great. However, the opening of new hospitals, hiring of paraprofessionals, selection of management staff and overall management of area hospitals was so poorly executed that it makes me wonder how THRIVE continues to be a contender within the Florida veterinary market. 

Every hospital is poorly stocked with medications and necessary tools that are critical in providing adequate veterinary care. Some relief DVMs have actually opted out of returning to any THRIVE hospital due to the limited resources they're provided. Need Simplicef? Sorry - that's not within the budget this month. They did add an online pharmacy to facilitate getting medications that may not be in stock at hospital to patients. However, this leaves DVMs with a choice - allow a patient to go untreated for several days while they await the delivery of their medications or treat with a less ideal medication. Like choosing between Apoquel and Prednisone. When this concern is addressed with the ABM (area business manager,) paraprofessionals are met with the same blanket response, "oh, yes you can get that! Run it by your lead so they can order it." It's a cop-out, because the leads must adhere to their tiny budgets, and have to say, "no." This makes the leads out to be the bad guys, while in all honesty, it's a failure within upper management to provide necessary supplies to new Florida hospitals.

Pay is NOT fair. Even if you go above and beyond, or are the only appropriately trained surgical technician in the building, you will likely make the same as a room technician. You are not rewarded for continuously completing tasks that are beyond your job description. When you discuss this with the ABM, you'll be met with the clever tag line that's written on several posters in the hospital treatment area: "everything is my job." 

The ABMs who manage 4+ hospitals at a time are the shot callers in every sense. However, they are rarely at the hospitals they manage, leaving the lead to contend with most issues. That would be fine, if leads had any actual managerial power. Leads can't even authorize little things like employee discounts or refunds! 

THRIVE USES A CLOUD-BASED EMR THAT IS RUN ON A BARELY FUNCTIONAL INTERNET SERVICE. You can infer how troublesome that can be.

I have worked in four veterinary hospitals in my entire career and have never seen such a high turnover rate! Higher than any Mars or Pet Partners hospital. That is seriously saying something.

I worked there as a vet tech and everything was great for a few weeks until I started seeing that some of the doctors play favorites and the management is absolute trash. Some doctors that work there will do their best to embarrass techs in front of clients by acting like they know everything and you absolutely don't. Also the management/higher ups are mostly from the hotel business and don't know anything about veterinary medicine, much less how to run anything for veterinary clinics.They're complete idiots. If they make any mistakes themselves, they'll try to cover it up with some sort of bribe. If they don't like you or you make them mad in any way by maybe taking too much time off or make any mistakes, they'll fire you right away without any warning whatsoever. They'll just come out of nowhere and tell you you're being let go and try to make you sign a paper that specifically says they gave you warning but didn't. Also when you get on, don't expect to get paid on time either. A lot of people don't get their first pay check until weeks later. They are very unprofessional there and will tell your business to anyone. Nothing is confidential, especially between co-workers. There's always some type of drama going on.The whole staff (including the doctors) are childish and will let personal issues interfere with their work. Also there are a lot of people there who have the "I'm better than you and I know everything," attitude and will kiss butt to the doctors at any time possible. I highly recommend this job if you're in this field and you really need the money, because the only upside is that the pay is good. And, if you're lucky to be there long enough without being fired first, you get good benefits too. Other than that, try to research better places before settling, especially if you're a tech.

To begin, you are promised a positive environment, competitive pay, management and a team that will help you learn and grow, meetings monthly with management to keep you on track with your goals, ect ect. None of this is true. They under pay you, while overpaying others. The work environment is toxic, full of bullies, management caters to their favorites while ignoring concerns of others. NO BREAKS. 10 hour shifts are actually 11-12+ hour shifts with NO breaks, you can try to take a full hour lunch, but you will never get to break on time, you will never leave on time. Corporate insists on double and triple booking, understaffing and then blaming the techs and doctors for not being able to keep up. Easily preventable mistakes are made constantly because of how stressed and overworked the team is, while everyone is just trying their best to take care of clients pets. The call center is a JOKE. They know nothing about animals, so they call the hospital for EVERYTHING, schedule wrong and make our jobs as techs a million time’s harder. Having NO receptionist is a terrible model. Techs are expected to be techs, doctor assistants, receptionists, and everything in-between while not even being staffed enough to just be techs for the amount of doctors on schedule. Everyone who works there is stressed and miserable, having no time for a personal life, being absolutely exhausted every day. Management promises things and just never follows through. You can work 10 hour shifts and get paid better at any other corporate vet if you want a work week like that. Thrive is a miserable place to work for. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I promise you there are a million other vets that are hiring.

When I was hired on with THRIVE I was taught that everything was my job and we were a team. Within the first few months I was being bullied by my immediate supervisor. When I said something to my area manager, they told me that this person has a certain personality and I would just have to try not to upset them or face the consequences and let it roll off of my back.  To me this was unacceptable and I requested a transfer immediately. 
I transferred to a busier more chaotic location in which was poorly managed. Constantly short staffed, regularly out of very important products, and the "team" was far from a team. The "everything is my job" motto was unknown to this group of people. At this location clients were allowed to walk all over the staff and talk down to you. Every staff meeting the area management will come and talk about the great numbers and pull us one by one aside to tell us how we aren't doing good enough, we should be faster, more efficient, push more products. We should be able to take out breaks and leave on time but also take all late appointments and walk ins because that's money the company wants. I asked to be moved to the chaos because I was being bullied and to come and work my behind off to be told I wasn't doing good enough... I have worked in emergency medicine and in a kill shelter but never have I ever dealt with people who made me dislike my profession so deeply.

My typical workday is a good balance of wellness and sick exams.  Weekends are typically busier than weekdays.  Veterinarians work a 35-hour work week, and I alternate every other weekend off (Fri,Sat,Sun). We get an hour lunch on 10 hour work days.  We receive 3 weeks of PTO and an extra week of PTO for CE with a generous CE budget.  THRIVE really wants you to grow as a veterinarian so the CE benefits rocks!   I have the freedom to practice medicine the way that I want, and I don't have to follow a set protocol.  Even though it's a big corporation, our clinic still has that small clinic vibe.

Management really cares about their employees and are always available if needed.  Everyone in leadership roles with THRIVE are approachable and supportive. 

Company-wide THRIVE focuses on positivity, integrity and teamwork.  Locally, the Baton Rouge team members genuinely care about each other and are always supportive of one another.  We have our own little quirky, pun-fun culture and cheesy jokes.

At one point, we had some staff shortages that became problematic.  This caused additional stress on our team.  However, our managers were quick to address the issues and helped coach us through this period of adversity. 

I really enjoy working for THRIVE.  They make you feel like family and are always available for support.  I am able to practice quality medicine for my patients at an affordable price.  I also have the flexibility to make the best recommendations for clients as I see fit and tweak those recommendations to fit a client's budget if needed.

I am going to start this review by stating that this company will make false promises in order to recruit veterinarians, ie production bonuses.  I knew working for a corporation was going to be a mistake and they definitely proved me right.  The upper management has financial success as their number one goal and care nothing about the staff.  There were several instances that staff expressed their concerns about policy, area business managers and client interactions that were readily dismissed.  The scheduling is atrocious, they express their "nose to tail" exam, client education and Q&A to be done with a matter for 15 minutes on top of their double booking appointment slots.  The limited stock of medications makes it extremely difficult to treat patients according to varied styles of medicine and their anesthesia protocols are dated at best.  They definitely scraped the bottom of the barrel with the equipment and instruments they purchased, but I'm sure it made the bottom line look amazing.  They continue to open clinics without appropriate staffing which makes it seem as though the higher ups had extra money to burn and decided to give running a vet clinic a shot and are going to be compensated whether it succeeds or not.  They are blinded at how their staff views management's incompetence and will blatantly lie to clients in order to save themselves.  All in all, if you have no other place to work, I would still consider doing relief work as opposed to signing a contract with this company.

I work at an extremely fast paced GP clinic, at the front desk. The leadership team supports all employees and does not shy away from conflict management. The team I work with is supportive and we work extremely well together. On a typical day we see around 46 regular appointments (at least) and 3-6 surgery patients. 
We have 4 full time doctors. We get a lot of new patients/clients, keep up with records for patients, referrals to specialists and/or emergency vets. There are some days that are tougher than others, such as days where you have to euthanize 5-8 patients. However, we also get the good days; Days where we get to see multiple puppies & kittens, or you get to see patients who have been dealing with a frustrating illness start showing improvement (or they are back to normal). You get really close to some of the clients & patients. My favorite part of the day is getting to sneak into an exam room to play with a kitten or get to hold a puppy in the lobby. 

In concept thrive is not a bad place to work. On average you only have a 4 day work week and still have full hours. The pay and benefits aren’t too bad either. But where they get you is that they double book appointments all day, their wellness visits are 15 minutes long and the sick visits are 30. This time includes everything from getting the pet checked in to the diagnostics and getting them checked out. Don’t ever expect to be fully staffed. A lot of vet clinics are short staffed to be fair. But they advertise a high doctor to tech ratio but you’re lucky if you two techs per doctor, very lucky if that’s on a two doctor day. They have huge inventory issues as well. So don’t expect to come in and have medications or tests available for your patients. This is a place where someone could sexually harass someone else with the aid of a co-worker and later get a promotion because “it won’t happen again”. 
I will say though, sometimes management really does try, and other times you won’t even be able to reach them for a few days at a time when you have clients needing information about their charts. 

Their COVID policies are similar to other places. Everyone wears a mask, a version of curbside appointments. Health screening when you get in. They won’t help you if you do get sick though. If you’re required to miss work they don’t have a paid leave program like other places so you’ll have to use what PTO you have.  

Not sure if its because the manager over seeing the clinics in the area is new to the vet field or just doesnt know what to do; if we are short staffed you have to fight to get number of appointments reduced, clients yell at you all the time, which would be fine if upper management would help protect the techs and actually fire clients or keep them in check. Pay is average, nothing spectacular but at least they dont short change you either. The module for hours is super weird, they claim 40 hour work week but majority of the time with lunches its 32-35 hours a week (with a good amount of over time options filling in on your days off) management doesnt give alot of support so the doctors run the clinics and drive negativity up, and generally run amok. There is no system set up for continued raises or yearly reviews (it might be a new company thing? But seriously its management 101) mid level management doesnt reveal the organization to the "peons" so no one knows any of the plans. Oh and information is a slow trickle (to be fair large new company is hard to trickle I formation anyways) its definitely a "the right hand knows not what the left hand does" situation. This also could just be local to my area, you see other thrive clinics avross the nation have great tech support and it could be a great over all program; but vet med in general will also need to change to get technicians the support they need in their roles.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Veterinary technician 179 salaries reported	$26.40 per hour
Veterinarian 98 salaries reported	$893 per day
Veterinary assistant 85 salaries reported	$22.30 per hour
Customer service representative 61 salaries reported	$19.11 per hour
General practitioner 51 salaries reported	$900 per day

Working at Thrive Pet Healthcare: Company Overview and Reviews

Thrive Pet Healthcare

Thrive Pet Healthcare Ratings

Popular jobs at Thrive Pet Healthcare

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected