This actually just affected me this weekend. I was out of town about 12 hours from home. My son was watching new dog that I've had for a month. She was puppy mill breeder so didn't have good medical care. Anyways she had a bought of hemmoraghic gastroenteritis and I told my son to take her to the ER (regular vet was closed). The one I had gone to for about 30 years was no longer on google (my last dog died in 2019). There happened to be a new one not to far. I wanted to make it easy on my son so I told him to go there. It was a chain (Blue Pearl) that had bought out the previous emergency vet that I used to go to. Their facility was very nice but it cost $2600 to have her there for 24 hours. None of the of fees were super expensive but they added up.

If they are corporate, that means they have an office somewhere with a lot of people to pay. Bigger overhead means they need greater income to meet their gross profit targets.