GenPro members elect Board of Directors

The General Practice Owners Association of Aotearoa New Zealand (GenPro), whose objectives include providing strong, credible and effective national representation for New Zealand’s network of General Practice and Urgent Care business owners, has confirmed the appointment of its inaugural, substantive Board of Directors.

The announcement comes after an on-line election with a 98% response rate which the interim chief executive of GenPro, Philip Grant, says, “is indicative of the significant engagement between GenPro members and the Association, as well as the strength of feeling which underpins GenPro’s objectives.”

The newly elected board members (more details attached) are:

• Dr Angus Chambers – GP and co-owner, Riccarton Clinic, Christchurch
• Dr Geoff Cunningham – GP and co-owner, Bush Road Medical Centre, Whangarei
• Dr Kawshi De Silva - GP, medical director and owner, Te Atatu South Medical Centre, Auckland
• Dr Tony Edwards – GP, co-owner and managing director, The Doctors Napier
• Dr Tim Malloy – GP and co-owner, Coast to Coast Health Care, Wellsford
• Ash Revell - General manager, Green Cross Health
• Dr Gerald Young - GP and director, White Cross CityMed

The newly elected Board will take over the governance of GenPro at the Association’s first Annual General Meeting being held on 5 November 2020 – that AGM will cover the part-year ending 30 June 2020 which was effectively the establishment phase of GenPro.

In the meantime, the interim Board will continue its responsibilities under the leadership of the interim chair, Dr Tim Malloy.

Immediately following the AGM the new Board will meet in closed session with an initial agenda including:

• The election of the chair
• Consideration of the need to co-opt additional capacity and/or capability to the Board in order to appropriately represent GenPro’s membership and oversee the achievement of its objectives
• Finalising GenPro’s Strategic Plan in light of feedback from the Association’s members.

GenPro’s interim chair, Dr Tim Malloy, says, “GenPro’s launch and early growth has been incredibly successful. As a continuation of that early development, we are now able to move forward with a substantive board directly elected and mandated by the members of the Association. It is on their behalf that GenPro operates to ensure the viability and sustainability of high-quality general practice and urgent care services across New Zealand.”

GenPro’s interim board consists of:

• Dr Angus Chambers – GP and co-owner, Riccarton Clinic, Christchurch
• Steffan Crausaz – Chief Executive Officer, Tamaki Health
• Dr Tony Edwards – GP, co-owner and managing director, The Doctors Napier
• David Jones – Chief Executive, Better Health
• Dr Tim Malloy – GP and co-owner, Coast to Coast Health Care, Wellsford
• Dr Clinton Newbury – GP and co-owner, Amberley Medical Centre
• Ash Revell - General manager, Green Cross Health
• Dr Murray Tilyard – GP, Professor of General Practice (Dunedin School of Medicine) and Chief Executive Officer of bpacnz
• Mark Wills – Chief Executive, Omni Health

GenPro’s new Board of Directors (with effect from 5 November 2020)

Dr Angus Chambers

• GP and company director, Riccarton Clinic, Christchurch

Dr Chambers believes he has a lot to offer the membership of GenPro with nearly 30 years of GP experience plus a significant amount of experience at a national level.

He has represented PHOs at PSAAP for 7 years with a focus on sustaining the primary care/general practice workforce to be able to deliver care.

Dr Chambers has chaired Christchurch PHO for 10 years and the Primary Health Alliance for 2 years (until Sept 2020) giving him a good knowledge of the issues facing general practice owners.
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Dr Geoff Cunningham

• GP and partner, Bush Road Medical Centre, Whangarei

Dr Cunningham is keen to pursue his interest in ensuring the viable future business case for General Practice in New Zealand. As a GP in Northland he is acutely aware of the issues created by funding inequities and the lack of adequate funding over many years.
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Dr Kawshi De Silva

• GP, medical director and owner, Te Atatu South Medical Centre

Dr De Silva has lived in New Zealand for the past 24 years. Prior to becoming a general practitioner and urgent care doctor, Dr De Silva worked in the public health field for 17 years. She has held executive roles in leading NGOs in New Zealand and as a part of her role she has advocated for policy and negotiated contracts nationally with the Ministry of Health and regionally with DHBs.

She has been a strong lobbyist and an advocate for Asian Health since 2017. Her last role in public health was to develop an Asian Health Strategy for Counties Manukau DHB.

Since 2011 as a general practitioner, she has advocated for the health of older adults and is the Champion for the Procare Population Health Strategy - Older Peoples Plan.

She is a board member of the Auckland branch of the RNZCGP and is very passionate about the inequities of health in our communities and building sustainable models of care.
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Dr Tony Edwards

• GP and managing director, The Doctors Napier

Dr Edwards believes GenPro has been needed for some time. He was a founding owner/director of The Doctors when it started in 1989 and adopted company structures and added business governance to clinical governance.

Dr Edwards believes general practice business has become more complex with diverse and often perverse drivers. He says it has had to adapt while being undemocratically represented in bodies such as PSAAP where major agreements are made affecting the sustainability of the business. He believes that devolvement of primary care to primary care is great, but where there is no margin, there is no mission.
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Dr Tim Malloy

• GP and partner, Coast to Coast Health Care, Wellsford

Dr Malloy believes that without GenPro there is no national voice for general practice and urgent care business owners. The sustainability of such businesses has suffered, and continues to suffer, as a result.

Dr Malloy supports GenPro’s aim to change the framework and the balance of negotiations to better support the sustainability and viability of general practice and urgent care businesses.

He is passionate about the need for change which is why he supported, and invested, in the establishment of GenPro.

Dr Malloy is chair of the national PRIME committee and was interim chair of GenPro as well as previous President of the Royal New Zealand College of GPs.
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Ash Revell

• General Manager, Green Cross Health

Ash Revell is General Manager of Green Cross Health Medical, which is one of NZ’s largest primary care providers with 43 GP and Urgent Care clinics across the country. Ash has a background in clinical medicine (Graduate of Auckland Medical School) and business strategy and leadership.

Ash works closely with clinical and management staff to ensure the businesses and organisation is running as effectively as it can to deliver high quality and accessible care to hundreds of thousands of kiwis.

With Green Cross Health being closely involved in co-ownership with a number of GP partners, Ash sees the need for general practice to remain sustainable from a business perspective in order to attract the ongoing investment required to maintain a world class primary health service.
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Dr Gerald Young

• GP and Director, White Cross CityMed

Dr Young has been in general practice for 32 years. He was involved in the Upton health reforms of the early 1990’s. Dr Young was the first Medical Executive for ProCare and as such responsible for assisting in its initial development; signing up members, developing systems for organised general practice to work effectively, negotiating the initial contracts with RHAs.

Dr Young left ProCare to develop CityMed, the largest general practice in the Auckland CBD. He envisioned that IPAs should become commercial entities in partnership with general practice to help development of robust general practice and IPAs would not be beholden to government funding for their survival and direction.

Dr Young believes that the evolution of the IPAs into PHOs and changes to the funding model has left general practice without a direct voice and impotent in negotiations. Negotiations for funding at Government level and even with their own PHOs.

Dr Young is keen to empower general practice again so that a strong general practice can help solve many of the health delivery problems that New Zealand is facing.