Compass in the black, keeps corporates out

Tū Ora Compass Health ended the year in the black after extra COVID-19 income saw it turn around last year’s small deficit.

The Wellington regional primary care network made a $920,644 operating surplus in 2020/21 after receiving more than $8 million more in revenue, chief executive Justine Thorpe told the annual general meeting earlier this month.

The pandemic response contributed 9 per cent of revenue.

Ms Thorpe told the AGM nearly $640,000 of the surplus had been placed in a reserve for primary care development projects.

She says despite the challenges of COVID-19 and the vaccination rollout, the network and practices have continued to deliver on a diverse portfolio of contracts and services.

Highlights include:

• strengthening relationships with mana whenua
• maintaining a focus on childhood immunisation
• 43 of the network’s practices being in the Health Care Home programme
• the network’s 57 practices delivering 1.5 million consultations to patients.

The PHO has almost doubled its size as an organisation, says Ms Thorpe. It employs more than 120 COVID-19 related staff, most of these as casual and fixed-term workers, including swabbers, call-centre staff and history-takers.

Ms Thorpe and board chair Larry Jordan thanked and farewelled former chief executive Martin Hefford, who left the role in August, after leading Tū Ora for nine years.

Giving the guest speaker address at the annual meeting, Mr Hefford pointed to the PHO’s general practice ownership and support arm, Latitude.

One of the aims of the not-for-profit subsidiary Latitude, was to keep practices in clinical ownership and sell back shares to clinicians when possible, says Mr Hefford, who is interim chief executive of Health New Zealand.

“It’s been remarkably successful,” he says.

Corporates “say they can’t get in there, and I think that’s a good thing. I think clinical ownership, community ownership, those are the right models for general practice into the future.”

Latitude made a profit of $77,562 in 2020/21.

Mr Hefford says he was proud of the PHO’s work in mental health, including the award-winning programme Piki, and embedding health improvement practitioners, mental health coaches and other mental health roles into general practices.

A theme during his time at Tū Ora was trying to move resources into the front line, for example, in new roles such as practice assistants, pharmacists in general practice, and outreach nurses.

“It’s been the longest job I’ve had in my life and the best job I’ve had in my life,” he says.

Kate Fairbrother, a doctor at Raumati Road Surgery in Kāpiti, was elected as the board’s network provider representative.

Other board changes included welcoming Kiri Rikihana (Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Te Ati Awa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Toa Rangatira), deputy chief executive of the Medical Council, as chair of the refreshed hauora Māori committee and as a Māori representative on the board.

This year the board got its first apprentice, specialist GP Nick Wright, of Brooklyn, Wellington.

Dr Jordan, a specialist GP at Whitby, will continue as chair while the board plans his replacement.