Close-Up
Dr Ken Jones – Building Dreams In his 60 odd years, there’s never been a moment when Dr Ken Jones has stood still – be it in business or in his family life. Ken Jones’ life story is full of surprises. Most will remember his heady days with Foundation Health about the year 2000 when the company was locking horns with Revesco, Primary Health Care, Mayne Nickless and Westpoint Corp to acquire general practices and amalgamate them into bigger medical centres. What may not be known is that Ken had also entered the battle for his premature son, born at 28 weeks in August 2001. The striving for his family and his model of the ideal practice continues today. Just over 50 years ago he migrated to Perth from the UK with his working-class parents. He was 16 and raring for adventure. After completing his electrician apprenticeship, he headed to Port Hedland and Dampier for five years to seek his fortune. Working on the construction of power stations and large iron ore facilities paid well. Creating the nest egg “I spent two years up there as a single man, went to England on holidays, then went back up north for three years with my first wife. We made enough money to buy two houses, one in Shenton Park and one in Leederville, and that gave us a good nest egg for the future. I didn’t have a mortgage throughout medicine!” he said. A downturn in the construction trades in the 1970s enticed Ken to seek a “recession-proof occupation”. He crammed Years 11 and 12 into a single year at Leederville Technical College to gain a TAE score high enough for medicine. “An impressive result for a work hardened tradesman, 13 years out of school, competing with some of the brightest academic minds in the state,” he said proudly. In 1979, he entered medicine at UWA and describes the
next six years as “probably the best years of this part of my life. Being a medical student was a thrill and a rare privilege.” He was enthralled by the whole scene – campus life, the hospitals, the students, the academic staff and the patients. He started medicine aged 29 years with five other “oldies” and he recalls a nurse, farmer and mechanic among them. “We’d hang out as a group during our six years in medicine. It was brilliant from a social point of view and a real privilege to go back and learn as a mature ager.” He’d made quite a lot of money in the North West as an electrician. But to fund his way through his higher education he worked Friday and Saturday nights at the Sunday Times and the Western Mail, loading trucks and collating papers. He did this for seven years and also worked some of his holidays as an electrician. He could not stand still. He spent a few years renovating houses and remembers putting proceeds into a deposit that earned 21.5%! In his final year of medicine his daughter from his first marriage was born. Loving good medicine He graduated in 1986, aged 36. Then followed three years at Fremantle Hospital, one year in general practice under the Family Medicine Program, then a year at KEMH and Wanneroo hospital doing obstetrics and gynaecology. “Working on the hospital wards and in casualty was a dream come true. It was so good getting into other people’s lives, watching the specialists go into the operations, it was fantastic and the best years of my life.” In 1989, his GP job at Whitfords Avenue Medical Centre under Dr Steve Jarvis established in his mind the model for general practice. “This was the first substantial multidisciplinary medical centre in Perth. Steve knew the business well and I learned the medical centre model from him. After working a year there, I moved to a similar facility in Thornlie for another year.” At the age of 41, Ken established the Belridge Medical Centre in Beldon. “For the first year it was hard going. Interest rates were 16-17% on a $1million loan,” he recalled, adding he was pleased when a chance encounter with a Commonwealth Bank Manager as a patient led to lower interest rates and more relaxing times. “It was the usual formula – bulk billing, 12 hours/7
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days, pathology, radiology, chemist and physiotherapy onsite – an instant success; eight busy doctors within 18 months.” “I had a lot of keen young GPs. It was different in those days [1991], you put an ad in Saturday’s West and GPs would work the shifts you gave them and take 50%. Not anymore!” He opened his second medical centre in Joondalup in 1994. Then divorce came and with it, the dividing of resources – Ken kept the medical centres. The Foundation experience “During the 1990s, there developed a professional disapproval of medical practice owners and GPs who worked in large bulkbilling medical centres. We were reproached for offering ‘5-minute medicine’, ‘never seeing the same patient twice’ and ‘ripping off Medicare’. The views of our College and the AMA were not encouraging.” He describes these organisations as “very conservative” and he took umbrage at the bad publicity. “I found this very offensive at the time and it was probably one of the drivers for me – I’m going to show that it can be done properly. I worked long hours, offered numerous minor surgical procedures, provided home and nursing home visits and delivered babies for 10 years. On top of that, I offered afterhours access and comprehensive onsite services. So the attitude of some of my peers and certainly my professional associations disappointed me.” Looking for a new challenge, Ken developed an ‘amalgamation’ model. “I’d identify willing GPs within a defined catchment; purchase their businesses; contract their services; relocate them into new facilities. I did not endorse building new facilities within a catchment unless I could fill these with existing catchment GPs. Mine was not a GP competitive model.” He stopped practising in 1999, set up office close to the city and engaged a PA. They spent the year analysing almost every metropolitan general practice location in Australia. They looked at things like amalgamation potential, suitable relocation sites, possibility of co-locating chemists, lease-break costs, etc. (Remember, Google launched in September 1998, so it was copious notes.) “During that phase, I bought and placed options on a number of medical businesses in Perth including Karrinyup, Spearwood, Kingsway, Madeley, Cottesloe, Rockingham and Bicton.”
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