Helping Expand FijiCare's Horizon

FijiCare board chairman Ross Porter said in the three years since the company publicly listed itself on the South Pacific Stock Exchange, it had consistently turned in profits and paid out dividends to its shareholders. "So it seemed to us that the only way forward was to grow FijiCare's overall horizon. Not just be an insurance provider but also work towards becoming a healthcare company," he said.

The expanded Fiji Care Insurance and Medical Centres Limited will use its most recent acquisition as a test bed for expanding to other parts of Fiji.

"Now if this works, we will open more of these around the country," FijiCare's managing director Peter McPherson said. Areas being looked at include Fiji's second city Lautoka, the international gateway town of Nadi, and the rapidly expanding municipality of Nausori. The town of Vatukoula, with its high concentration of people employed in the high-risk industry of mining, has not escaped the company's eyes.

New business direction...Peter McPherson, Ross Porter and Dr Rosemary Mitchell.

The acquisition takes a step further the relationship FijiCare has with the medical centre. One of its former owners, Dr Rosemary Mitchell has been re-employed as the centre's medical director. All other employees have been retained.

"I think the great thing from FijiCare's point of view is that Dr Mitchell has been our medical director for a number of years, probably all the way through, and she has a great understanding of the business and our insurance products," Porter said. "She has given great input into the products that we have out there in the marketplace."

Porter said even as they were publicising their expansion strategy in Fiji, "we still have very much in our plans to expand throughout the South Pacific region".

FijiCare is owned by Sydney-based Australian Family Assurance Group, which has business interests in Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu. FijiCare manages a business in Tonga and another in the Solomons. Both go by the name Family Assurance. It also has a licence to operate in Samoa that it has not utilised, although it insures employees of the South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme and is negotiating with Carlton Brewery (Fiji) Ltd, which recently purchased Samoa Breweries.

"FijiCare is looking very closely at either partnering or buying out some of those businesses so it can really establish itself as the premier healthcare company in the South Pacific," Porter said.

"That's a pretty tall order and a pretty big plan, but we think we now have the impetus. We now have the branding‹FijiCare is a very strong name and we think the new medical centre is a step forward for us."

McPherson said the entrance into the Pacific of its healthcare business would take place 18 months to two years from now. "We don't have the same restriction with our insurance business but there is no reason why we can't develop medical centres in these other countries."

Mitchell said FijiCare was focusing not only on secondary healthcare, but also primary healthcare. "Primary healthcare is preventative, secondary healthcare is general practice, and tertiary healthcare is hospitalisation. We are not into hospitalisation yet, let someone else do that. But we hope to strengthen our primary healthcare delivery system and that is a new concept for us."

General practice in Fiji, (and the Pacific), is a relatively new concept, she said. "If you look around Fiji for example, there are very few of what is called group practices. Most practices in Fiji are single doctors or married couples.

"We were the first group practice in Fiji to set up as unrelated doctors, but I just see (our decision to sell our practice to FijiCare) as the next progression.

"We are moving private practice forward and to a more professional level to something more in tune with what is happening overseas.
"There you have large group practices who put all their resources together, working with insurance companies, the government sector and the private sector to centralise services," Mitchell said.

"This is not an unusual thing to do. It may be unusual in Fiji's medical sector but it occurs in business generally. The small cottage industry type family businesses are now maturing in the modern world and going into this concept of merging with other bigger companies that can help you grow," she said.