Corporate Vision July 2017

8 CORPORATE VISION / July 2017 , TristarMedical Group was established to ensure that high quality, accessible and affordable medical services would always be available to regional and rural communities. From those humble beginnings, the TristarMedical Group has gone on to establish a network of outstanding clinics. We were very fortunate to interview the firm’s Dr. Khaled El-Sheikh, who reveals more about the firmand his thoughts on receiving the 2017’s Most Outstanding Medical Group CEO award, plus being recognised in the Australian CEO Top 25 series. Only as Successful as Your Team Tristar has also pioneered several important initiatives including training and support for all medical staff with specialised programmes designed specifically for international medical graduates. Tristar also offers patients the convenience of being able to visit any one of the Tristar clinics and have their medical records available. Tristar clinics are predominately bulk billing, unlike most other clinics. Tristar offers traditional family medicine and gives patients the ability to make an appointment with the choice of a doctor. Tristar Medical Group has 58 medical centres across Australia. Dr. Khaled El-Sheikh is keen to share with his reflections on receiving the 2017’s Most Outstanding Medical Group CEO award, plus being recognised in the Australian CEO Top 25 series. He says he is humbled and happy at these much- deserved recognitions, adding that they both validate the work of the firm and will encourage him to continue his work in the medical field. He starts the interview by explaining what his current job role as CEO involves. “As a CEO, especially over that last four or five years, the size of the company has grown. I started to encourage my team to have the freedom of innovation, following the financial crisis, after which we had no increase in our income. Because of this, I encouraged the team to innovate, which has helped us to increase a frozen income. We have become more efficient in terms of cutting costs, so whatever we can do to help us manage our overheads, is very useful indeed. “In terms of patient care, my aim is to deliver nothing but the highest quality and to continue hiring staff to work here. In terms of nursing, we had to think about small communities, where there are only around 600 people, so there has been a real shortage of medical staff. We started however to use a very innovative network, where a nurse can be sitting in a practice in the Northern territory, but elsewhere in the country there could be shortage of staff. The network enables communication between practices plus added to that, all the patient records here are stored under one umbrella. This improves care dramatically and prevents time being wasted when chasing up patient records. Focussing more on his role as CEO, Dr. El-Sheikh goes on to give a compelling insight into what he perceives to be the main attributes of such a leader, detailing his most significant achievements in this vein. “To lead inclusively is an important attribute of any CEO, who is only as successful as their team. You need to lead your team to success. I see that there are so many intelligent people and it is important that you employ the right ones and lead them in the right direction. “Tristar Konnect is an area where the firm has been innovative recently, with amazing patient outcomes plus our ICT team have achieved amazing things. We are the first medical group in Australia to move over to Amazon, where there is a full facility to advance, showcase and implement advanced technology such as the cloud. In such a large country, the fastest possible communication is always very helpful indeed. “We have a new centralised management structure which is based in one area, so all the practices have a contact, who is the link between the head office and the individual practice on the ground. Each contact is trained in all areas and will support the clinic always, but I do believe that keeping the management under one roof will ensure sustainability and it will also help us serve the wider community more effectively. Dr. El-Sheikh then reveals his career journey before coming a CEO and how he attained his current position. This story begins when he arrived in Australia back in 1995, working in the North West of Australia in the medical field, when he started to structure education and training to build something that is of good quality that can serve the community well. “In 2003, I was running a business jointly with my wife, but it grew and needed a larger structure which came in 2011, so that is when I became the managing director and then the CEO around the time of the financial crisis. It was quite an interesting journey in terms of holding the fort and being one of the top four clinics throughout the whole of Australia. “The best thing about being a CEO is to be able to build a great team and see them achieve and succeed, indeed that is what personally satisfies me the most. The other thing, is to see a problem solved, or a difficult challenge fixed. The sense of achievement that you convey as a CEO to team leaders is something I strongly believe in - and that problems can be solved 1706CV05