Ethics: Your Practice’s Bottom Line

By David Ramey, DVM

It is certainly true that a practice needs to be profitable to survive. Indeed, in 1970, Milton Friedman, the late Nobel Prize-winning economist, asserted that the sole purpose of a business is to make money for its shareholders.1 For veterinary practitioners, one measure of success is assuredly the business’ profit margin. But from an ethical
perspective, is the bottom line really the bottom line?