Veterinary clinic employee benefits

By Holly Bengfort on November 20, 2025 at 9:00 AM

Veterinary medicine has advanced rapidly, bringing sophisticated diagnostics and treatments into everyday practice. As animal care standards rise, demand for veterinarians is climbing fast. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics¹ (BLS) projects the employment of veterinarians will grow by 19% from 2021 to 2031, far outpacing the average growth for most other occupations.

This makes attracting and retaining talent increasingly difficult, especially for small, independent veterinary care clinics. Offering competitive benefits can help, but traditional options are often expensive and complicated.

In this article, we’ll show you how to offer quality benefits without straining your budget or adding extra administrative work.

In this blog post, you'll learn:

Why employee benefits matter for veterinary clinics.
How personalized benefits give small practices a huge advantage.
The types of benefits that support common veterinary career paths.

The importance of employee benefits in veterinary medicine

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association² (AVMA), roughly 130,000 veterinarians are practicing in the U.S., with around 80% of them working in private³ veterinary hospital settings. With an average ratio of one veterinarian to four or five⁴ staff members, the industry is largely made up of small private practices.

At the same time, large corporate veterinary groups continue to expand. Competing with their salaries and resources can be difficult for locally owned clinics. Employee benefits can help level the playing field. A strong benefits package enhances job satisfaction, fosters career growth, and enhances recruitment for both licensed veterinarians and those pursuing other veterinary career paths.

Benefits also help reduce turnover, lower stress, increase productivity, and build a healthier workplace culture. In a field known for its emotionally demanding and sometimes difficult job responsibilities, that support is especially important.

How do personalized employee benefits help veterinary clinics?

While traditional benefits, such as group health plans, are often the first consideration for employers seeking to build a benefits package, they can be challenging to implement because of their cost and complexity. This is why you should consider personalized employee benefits.

Personalized benefits are often offered through a defined contribution approach, where employers allocate a fixed amount either as a reimbursable allowance or an account. These benefits can be easier to administer. And, they allow your employees to use their benefits the way they want to, enabling you to satisfy each employee's individual needs.

Personalized employee benefits can also save you money and provide more value. With personalized benefits, you can set your own budget that stays consistent each month. Because your employees have more say in how they use those benefits, their participation rate can go up—meaning that you won't be funding unused employee benefits.

As a result, many clinics switch to personalized benefits and individual health insurance plans to free up valuable time and money.

You can provide personalized benefits through the following methods:

Health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs)
Benefit expense cards
Lifestyle spending accounts (LSAs) or employee stipends
Expense reimbursement

What types of employee benefits are available?

Veterinary medicine employers can choose from a wide range of employee benefits, including traditional benefits, personalized benefits, and employee perks.

Some of the most popular employee benefits are:

Health benefits
Mental health and wellness benefits
Paid time off (PTO)
Retirement benefits
Education benefits

Let's look at a few of these benefits in more detail in the following sections.

Health benefits

One perk job seekers tend to look for the most is a quality health benefit. It's one of the most sought-after employee benefits you can provide. According to PeopleKeep's 2024 Employee Benefits Survey, 92% of employees rated health benefits as important.

A wide spectrum of health benefits is available. Let's go over your options.

Traditional group health insurance

Many employers choose to offer a group health insurance plan to their employees. While group health insurance is an excellent benefit, the rising cost of health insurance has turned many small to mid-sized employers away.

According to KFF⁵, only 31% of organizations with fewer than 50 employees offered group health insurance to their employees. Assuming vet clinics follow the same pattern, 69% of veterinary staff would be without a group health plan.

For those who want to offer a fully-insured group health insurance, small group health plans are available for small businesses. You might also be eligible for small business insurance subsidies.

However, many veterinary medicine clinics are moving away from traditional group health insurance in favor of personalized health benefits like HRAs.

Health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs)

A stand-alone health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) is a popular option among organizations that want to offer flexible health benefits to their employees. An HRA is an employer-funded benefit that allows you to reimburse employees tax-free for qualifying medical expenses, including health insurance premiums.

With an HRA, you can control your health benefits spend. You set a contribution for your employees, and your benefit costs won’t exceed that amount. This makes an HRA a more affordable option for veterinary clinics than traditional group plans.

Two of the most popular stand-alone HRAs are:

The individual coverage HRA (ICHRA): An ICHRA is a great health benefits option for clinics of all sizes. With an ICHRA, you can customize your monthly allowances by employee classes. If you have more than 50 FTEs, an ICHRA can help you satisfy the Affordable Care Act (ACA)'s employer mandate as long as you offer an affordable allowance and your employees have individual coverage with MEC.
The qualified small employer HRA (QSEHRA): A QSEHRA is specifically designed for organizations with fewer than 50 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) that don't offer any group plans. The IRS caps QSEHRA allowances for the year. This is a great option for small veterinary practice owners who want to offer their first health benefit to employees. Employees must have health coverage that meets minimum essential coverage (MEC) standards to participate.

Health stipends

A health stipend is another health benefit option. It's extra money that employers offer employees for medical expenses. Health stipends have fewer restrictions on what medical care expenses and mental health benefits you can use for them because they're not formal, defined health benefits. This means that they are taxable for both the employer and the employee.

While HRAs are a better choice for most organizations, a health stipend is helpful if you have many employees who receive advance premium tax credits (APTC). Your employees can take advantage of their health stipend while maintaining APTC eligibility. However, a health stipend doesn't meet the ACA’s employer mandate for organizations with 50 or more FTEs.

Mental health and wellness benefits

While veterinary medicine is an enjoyable and fulfilling career for those passionate about animals, it also presents its challenges. Dealing with unhappy pet parents and treating sick animals is stressful. According to Merck's 2024 Animal Health study⁶, 82% of veterinarians experience “low to medium burnout” at work. On top of that, 61% of veterinarians reported feeling exhausted at work, compared to 32% of workers overall.

If employers don't address these working conditions, it can result in severe consequences. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention⁷ (CDC) conducted research showing that veterinarians have a higher risk of suicide compared to the general population.

For these reasons, it's important to provide your staff with access to mental health services, such as counseling or support groups. Our survey found that 80% of employees rated mental health and/or wellness benefits as important, so it's likely your employees will take advantage of what you offer them.

With that said, you can also implement a wellness program to further improve the quality of life for your employees. Wellness programs help improve your employees' physical health, which relieves stress, increases productivity, and reduces absenteeism.

Popular wellness programs include:

Smoking cessation programs
Fitness or weight loss programs
Group wellness activities
Nutrition and healthy snack programs
Wellness apps
Gym memberships

There are other ways to introduce an employee wellness program as a small veterinarian clinic. Instead of creating a comprehensive program, you can offer your staff a taxable wellness stipend.

Wellness stipends empower your employees to use their monthly allowance as they want. Your employees can use their wellness stipend to pay for exercise classes, exercise equipment, gym memberships, fitness trackers, mobile apps, and more.

Paid time off (PTO)

Your employees want benefits that support their personal lives. An ample amount of PTO gives them more power and flexibility over their work-life balance, which makes the benefit a major selling point for today's workforce. According to our survey, 90% of employees rated PTO as an important employee benefit.

There are many ways to establish vacation time and sick leave. The most common method is for employees to accrue time off and sick leave for the number of hours they've worked. However, some organizations have started offering unlimited PTO.

Retirement plans

Retirement benefits come right after PTO in order of importance to employees. Our survey found that 89% of employees consider them important. Small veterinarian clinics can offer their employees retirement benefits, like a 401(k) or IRA, to help them prepare for the future.

Education benefits

Veterinary degrees don't come cheap. A career in veterinary medicine requires about eight years of schooling, with in-state tuition averaging around $200,000 and out-of-state tuition about $275,000⁸.

Education benefits, such as tuition reimbursement or student loan repayment, can attract recent graduates with veterinary degrees, support existing staff, and strengthen long-term veterinary career development.

Other benefits for vet clinic employees

Vet clinics can offer several other benefits and perks to their employees. While some are becoming widespread, others are unique to the veterinary industry.

Some additional employee benefits include:

Discounts on veterinary care services for pet owners
Uniform allowance
Financial literacy programs

Conclusion

By offering employee benefits at your veterinary clinic or animal hospital, you'll improve the lives of your staff while reducing employee turnover. Health benefits, PTO, retirement plans, wellness programs, and tuition benefits are excellent options that can significantly improve retention rates and attract ideal job candidates for your practice.

If you’re ready to offer personalized health benefits at your clinic, PeopleKeep by Remodel Health can help. Our HRA administration platform makes it easy to set up and manage a QSEHRA or ICHRA in minutes.

This blog article was originally published on December 16, 2014. It was last updated on November 20, 2025.