John Poynton’s Prime Health Group has further expanded its interests in the corporate health sector by acquiring RMS Corporation.
John Poynton’s Prime Health Group has further expanded its interests in the corporate health sector by acquiring RMS Corporation.
The acquisition means that Prime has nearly doubled in size since Mr Poynton bought the business from Endeavour Health Care in late 2004.
RMS has about 25 staff providing on-site health and lifestyle programs, principally to remote mining operations.
The RMS purchase followed Prime’s acquisition of Health Safety and Training Services in July 2005.
Prime has also achieved organic growth of 20 to 25 per cent, marked by the recent opening of a new occupational health clinic in Joondalup.
Prime chief executive Julie Carr said the company now had about 150 staff across six medical clinics, a safety and training division, specialist consulting services and corporate health, incorporating RMS.
Ms Carr said the company planned to integrate the services developed by HST and RMS with its established occupational health services.
“We are starting to see more organisations recognise the critical links between health, safety and well being,” Ms Carr said.
She said “healthy lifestyle” services were initially offered by employers to attract and retain staff.
“There is an increased awareness, though, that these staff benefits also offer significant organisational benefits, in creating a healthier and more productive workforce and in engendering a culture of well being.”
Ms Carr said Prime could see enormous opportunities to improve the way organisations handled their medi-cal assessment processes at the recruit-ment and pre-employment stages.
This could include linking health information back to work sites, and then managing health and wellbeing over the life of the employment relationship, with a goal of preventing injury and ensuring a healthy and productive workforce.
RMS’s key staff, including company founder Rebecca Morton Stephens, who established the business in 1996, will continue to work for Prime.
The services offered by RMS include on-site healthy lifestyle programs, health screening, health promotion, fitness classes, injury prevention and exercise rehabilitation.
Mr Poynton’s acquisition of Prime was part of an extensive restructuring of the corporate health industry.
The vendor, Endeavour Health Care, was a 1990s high flyer that gained several high-profile backers, including the late Kerry Packer, but failed to trade successfully.
During 2004, Eneavour sold its medical centres to Independent Practitioner Network. Its pathology business was sold to Sonic Healthcare and the occupational health business was sold to Mr Poynton.
