John Macaskill-Smith announces his departure from Pinnacle Ventures

John Macaskill-Smith, chief executive of Pinnacle Ventures has announced he will be leaving to take on new challenges.

The following statement is from John.

As the end of 2019 rolled into 2020 I had been taking some time to think about key milestones – coming up to 20 years in the Pinnacle Group in a variety of roles including approaching the fourth year for Ventures.

It’s an exciting time for the Pinnacle Group. Pinnacle Midlands Health Network (MHN) is now safely in the hands of Helen Parker, Pinnacle Incorporated with support from MHN is undertaking a major refresh of engagement with the network, Ventures now has a broader leadership team along with a strong emerging strategy, and many of Ventures key projects are shifting from early development phase to more mature positions.

I have in conjunction with the Board been in discussions stretching back six months and have decided that now is a great time for me to step back and take on some new challenges. I have therefore tendered my resignation and will undertake key project handover, with April being a jointly agreed finishing time.

It’s been an amazing almost 20 years, with Pinnacle Group Limited, MHN and Ventures. Pinnacle have contributed to and led so many of the key changes that New Zealand primary care and the broader health sector has undertaken. It’s always been firstly about great support for the network which is a hard thing to always get right with often conflicting needs. It’s always been about striving for better patient outcomes and it’s been about many many partnerships.

There have been so many firsts.

• First diabetes register contributing to the initial diabetes forecasting models.
• First network to fund and support practices getting the internet with POTS.
• Co-designing and launching the regional e-referral platform.
• Launching the second PHO in New Zealand.
• Eight years later through the Better, Sooner, More Convenient process the consolidation of six PHOs into MHN.
• Publishing the first workforce mapped to patient demand profiles for New Zealand that have fuelled and supported many of the other changes, including designing and the eventual launch of the Health Care Home - now active in 250+ practices throughout New Zealand, supported by the national Health Care Home Collaborative.
• Launching xcrania as the first private health secure cloud for supporting practices with accessing better standards of IT and support.
• Commissioning and co-designing indici, which is becoming the key choice for practice management system for not only New Zealand general practice but a growing range of community and Allied services.
• Introducing and launching pharmacogenomics including education, access to testing and electronic integration.
• First PowerBI layer of New Zealand primary care data.
• Building the first major data lake for the health sector and enabling access to a broad range of public cloud services and new models.
• First AWS primary care village @ the 2019 HINZ Conference…

While it’s been super exciting it has also been really challenging at times and I am really looking forward to some new challenges in completely different areas.

Craig McFarlane, on behalf of the Pinnacle and Ventures Boards, wants to acknowledge the major leadership role that John has played in so many key areas and wish him the best for the future.