Building a legacy: How one independent veterinarian grew while staying true to her values 

Dr. Christa Williams, founder of Caravan Vet, knew she wanted to be a veterinarian from a very young age. “I read ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, and I wanted to be Lucy with her healing potion, helping all the animals,” she recalls. That childhood dream eventually expanded beyond practicing medicine. “The further down that path I got, the more I realized I wanted to start my own practice… I had this vision of what veterinary practice could be, and I wanted to manifest it,” says Dr. Williams, a diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners (DABVP).

Unable to secure financing for a brick-and-mortar practice in the winter of 2011, Dr. Williams found another way. She purchased a 26-foot truck (affectionately named Dutch) and launched a mobile veterinary clinic in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area. Over the next decade, Caravan Vet grew steadily, earning a loyal following.

In 2025, after reaching client capacity, Dr. Williams took out a $1.5 million loan to buy a building in Minneapolis’s Harrison neighborhood that came up for sale just as she needed it. “When the universe wants you to succeed, the doors open,” Dr. Williams says. The move transformed Caravan Vet into a hybrid practice, allowing it to offer both house calls and in-clinic appointments.

The practice’s growth brought more overhead and greater operational complexity, especially around cost of goods, prescription fulfillment, and veterinary inventory management. Ordering through multiple suppliers involved manual data entry and reconciliation that drained staff time. Those demands became even more pronounced when associate veterinarian Dr. Andrea Nason took a winter leave of absence, and Dr. Williams covered the gap with 70-hour work weeks to keep the practice from operating at a loss.

The practice also faced mounting external pressures. Corporate consolidation was accelerating across the veterinary industry. At the same time, Caravan Vet’s growing patient population required a broader range of medications and veterinary diets, making inventory increasingly difficult to manage. Every prescription filled elsewhere meant lost revenue, and less visibility into whether patients were getting the products the clinic recommended. “You are paying someone to fill prescriptions [through online or big-box retailers] and seeing no revenue from it,” Dr. Williams says. “It just makes no sense to me that you wouldn’t really dial in on online pharmacy revenue.”

Despite those pressures, Dr. Williams remained committed to her long-term vision to operate an independent, locally owned business. “Being an independent veterinary practitioner means everything to me,” she says. “It is super important that small businesses continue to form the backbone of communities. They’re what make communities unique and diverse and special and exciting.”

Without addressing these operational challenges, she couldn’t reinvest in her team — a priority she considered non-negotiable.

Dr. Williams mapped out a long-term strategy to give the practice solid footing as an independent business, support their financial goals, and improve client loyalty.

The online pharmacy presented a clear opportunity. Caravan Vet had been using Covetrus® prescription management solutions because they appreciated the seamless integration with their veterinary medical records software (Impromed®), the wide product mix, and quality control standards for compounded medications. “I realized we really needed to fine-tune our online store, our cost of goods, and our ordering systems,” Dr. Williams says. “We really dug into online pharmacy options, and Covetrus ended up being our best fit.”

Working with their local Covetrus representative, the clinic identified opportunities to strengthen margins and improve financial performance. They also set up monthly check-ins and trained the staff to use vRxPro® to its full potential. “Our [Covetrus] reps have raised the standard for…what kind of partnership we can have,” says Faith, finance and operations administrator at Caravan Vet.

On the advice of their rep, they also joined Covetrus VetSuite®, a network committed to helping independent veterinary practices thrive by offering tools, savings, and support to make the business side easier and more affordable. Faith admits the team was skeptical at first. “Once we were shown, in real time, what the results could be and how that would help us achieve our financial goals, we were more believing in the cause,” she says.

Centralizing purchasing and reducing costs freed up time that Faith now reinvests in strategic priorities, from researching better employee benefits to using VetSuite reporting tools to benchmark performance against national trends. “Seeing those rebates and hitting those revenue goals is very important to us,” Faith notes. “We’re very goal oriented.”

That work paved the way for a new clinic policy: Caravan Vet no longer faxes or mails prescriptions. Clients who choose to fill prescriptions elsewhere must pick up a written script — a change that reduced staff time spent on administrative tasks that didn’t generate revenue.

The practice staff presents the policy as a patient-care standard. Instead of avoiding hard conversations, they clearly explain to clients why the source of a product matters.

Dr. Williams recalls a client who bought cyclosporine online for her itchy dog without a prescription or dosing guidance. “I talked to her about how this is not safe,” she says. “That kind of blew her mind.”

Sharing stories like this with clients and explaining the “why” behind the policy leads to better education and understanding. “For the most part, our clients are pretty committed to the practice,” Dr. Williams says. “They want us to succeed. And they trust our medical recommendations.”

The prescribing process is also simplified. When a digital prescription is written through vRxPro ProScripts, it automatically sends an email to the client with a direct link for purchase, keeping client purchases in-house while accommodating their busy schedules. The Quick Recs feature also enables Caravan Vet to recommend products instantly during the appointment, without full prescription entry upfront.

“It’s wonderful being able to put in both prescriptions but also over-the-counter options for things that we’re recommending for clients and being able to send them either a text message or an email that they can follow up with later,” Dr. Nason says.

“With Covetrus, we’ve got a very easy-to-use platform. I love that things load directly into our electronic medical record, so everything is complete,” Dr. Nason adds. “People can track what we have ordered, what has been shipped, what the client’s actually using.”

Not only does this promote better patient outcomes, it also fosters lasting client relationships: Dr. Williams is caring for the fourth generation of pets in some families.

Caravan Vet is now running a leaner, more efficient operation. With greater revenue stability, the practice can stay independent and reinvest in the business, its people, and the care it provides.

With increased focus, the online storefront now generates approximately $4,000 a month in profit. “That is essentially paying somebody’s salary here in the practice,” Dr. Williams says. That mattered most during the winter stretch without Dr. Nason. “A large part of why we made it through was our online profit nudged us into the black,” Dr. Williams says. “Without that, we would have been operating at a loss.”

Meeting business goals and growing a reliable revenue stream also allows Caravan Vet to continue supporting its team. What began with Dr. Williams and one certified veterinary technician has grown to a staff of 14, some of whom have been along for the ride for 6, 8, or even 14 years.

Weekly staff meetings, monthly mindfulness breaks, peer recognition, and a “feelings” metric are all part of how Dr. Williams protects the culture she’s built. “We work really hard to find ways to take care of their emotional and mental needs as well as their financial and physical needs,” she says.

Today, Dr. Williams gets to live out her dreams: not only caring for animals but also leading the independent veterinary practice she long envisioned. Twenty-five years into her career, Dr. Williams sees herself as equally a veterinarian and a small business owner. “I am very legacy focused,” she says. “This is what I have made to give to the world.”