Changing practice ownership 2022 MAPPED: Trends - Green Cross buy-ups, GP joint ventures

Purchases by corporate and other ownership networks have stepped up in the past 18 months with more than 40 medical centres going fully or partially into network ownership. That is about three times the number of transactions that went through in the 2020 calendar year.

The biggest player has been Green Cross, which added 15 centres (13 practices and two satellite clinics) to its stable since New Zealand Doctor Rata Aotearoa last updated our map in early 2021.

Eleven other networks are responsible for the other purchases. Some of the smaller practices purchased have been merged or absorbed into existing centres.

Three networks have established new joint-venture practices. These are Third Age and Phoenix Healthcare’s new Christchurch practice; a Very Low Cost Access Invercargill practice established by WellSouth and local iwi; and East Health Trust and Care Group’s ambitious Highbrook Medical start-up in Auckland.

The result is that there are 40 new “dots” on our map representing more practices and clinics now owned by corporate and other ownership networks, including ownership arms of PHOs.

That brings the number of network-owned medical centres on our map up to about 220 – more than double the 106 we had on the first iteration of our map in 2014.

And more than a million patients are now enrolled with practices fully or partially owned by a dozen networks.

For this map update, we asked networks for details on how many of the practices added to their networks were joint ventures and, in particular, how many of the practices still had GP shareholders.

It appears about a third of the medical centres (69 of the 220) in corporate or other networks’ stables still have GP shareholders with skin in the game, including some with nurse and practice manager shareholders.

The percentage may be higher as Tāmaki Health, owner of just under 50 medical centres, declined to share information on jointventure practices.

Christchurch specialist GP Angus Chambers, a co-owner of one of Tāmaki’s two recent purchases, Riccarton Clinic & After-Hours Medical Centre, says Tāmaki bought a 50 per cent stake in the Christchurch practice and urgent-care centre last year.

At Green Cross Health, 23 of its 57 centres are joint ventures with GPs or other practice stakeholders – with eight of those new partnerships from purchases in the past 18 months.

Half of South Link Health’s network practices are joint ventures, with GPs owning 33 to 90 per cent stakes.

Meanwhile, nearly all of the practices in both the Better Health and OmniHealth networks are joint ventures with GPs and other clinic stakeholders.

Our interactive map (online at nzdoctor.co.nz) also shows a further 130 or so practices owned by charitable trusts, iwi, Te Whatu Ora or educational institutions, making a total of just short of 350 mapped medical centres.

Te Whatu Ora media coordinator Sanjana George says 950 practices have contracts with a PHO. In early 2019, 985 practices were contracted.