Genmed, a provider of vendor neutral managed services to the NHS, announces the appointment of Jonathan Wedgbury as chairman and Geoff Baker as a non-executive director.
With rapid growth year on year, Genmed is strengthening the board to focus on its strategic positioning and operational execution to meet the significant growth opportunities within the NHS along with healthcare markets internationally. It is bringing onto its board individuals with extensive business and healthcare expertise to support the development of the company.
With over 35 years of commercial and procurement experience, Jonathan Wedgbury has held a range of senior roles in the health sector. A former commercial director for the West Midlands Regional Health Authority, he was appointed chief executive of NHS Healthcare Purchasing Consortium (HPC) in 2001 – an organisation he created and launched which was one of if not the first procurement consortiums within the NHS.
Here he was responsible for all procurement and supply chain expenditure for the West Midlands along with North Central London Strategic Health Authority[1]. This involved managing in total an annual non-pay spend budget of around £3.8 billion where he delivered a four to one ROI[2] benefit to customers. This was achieved through rationalisation, standardisation and, of course, strategies to drive down costs.
To better serve customers, Jonathan then led the divestment of NHS HPC in 2011 to Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) – the largest privately owned hospital system in the world with revenues of over $41 billion. NHS HPC was rebranded Health Trust Europe LLP with the company becoming HCA’s group purchasing organisation in addition to servicing organisations in other industries, working with companies such as the Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. He was appointed its chief executive.
Jonathan has a thorough understanding of the UK, European and North American healthcare sectors having worked at hospital, regional and national levels. After leaving Health Trust Europe in 2017, he then gained mergers and acquisition experience working in private equity alongside Tower Brook Capital Partners.
Commenting on his appointment as chairman, Jonathan says, “Genmed provides much needed capital to the NHS via their managed service contracts and delivers an unique service to the NHS. Trusts get the latest equipment at reduced cost not only because of the reclamation of VAT but through Genmed’s ability to negotiate and drive down prices. Moving forward, our objective is to solidify Genmed’s position as the premier managed service provider to the NHS and look for opportunities to develop the business internationally given austerity measures in healthcare now touch Europe and beyond.”
Geoff Baker has been appointed as a non-executive director. He is an independent chartered engineer and entrepreneur who has successfully set up, grown and sold two successful consultancy and managed services businesses – ATL Group, a technical services firm in the industrial, defence and oil and gas markets and Plant Asset Management (PAM) which he co-founded with finance provide by Petrofac, a FTSE 100 multinational oil services company. He was responsible for growing PAM from start-up to a turnover of £35 million and 280 staff with operations in Europe, America, Middle East and Australia until it was fully acquired by Petrofac in 2015.
Geoff is a former president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and strong advocate for the encouragement of entrepreneurship within engineering. He now works extensively with Southampton University supporting its Future Worlds programme to mentor and advise start-ups about how they can be ‘spun off’ into commercial enterprises.
Furthermore, he was one of the founding non-executive directors of The FSE Group – formed by the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) – to provide sources of finance and advice to UK companies who otherwise wouldn’t be able to secure funding from traditional banking or venture capital routes.
Geoff says, “Over the past 10 to 15 years, the large multinationals in the oil and gas sector have radically changed the way they’re structured. They’ve focused on core business outsourcing non-core functions to external providers using global managed service agreements. Given my experience creating and developing companies, I’ll be adding value and providing input about the disciplines, infrastructure, systems and processes that need to be developed by Genmed to support its ongoing business expansion.”
Geoff started his career serving a five year mechanical engineering apprenticeship with the British Aircraft Corporation and graduated from Cranfield University with a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Robin Modak, Genmed’s chief executive officer, says, “Our company is growing extremely quickly and the appointment of Jonathan and Geoff is imperative to help with the structuring and resource planning required along with having guidance and support to navigate the fast changing environment within the NHS from a regulatory and strategic perspective. This will ensure that we maintain our position at the forefront of innovation in vendor neutral managed services.”
For further information, please visit www.genmed.eu
References:
[1] This included all procurement for Great Ormond Street, Whittington, Royal Free and University College hospitals.
[2] Return on investment
