One of New Zealand’s largest GP networks is changing hands, with digital first provider Tend Health striking a 270 million dollar deal to buy The Doctors from NZX listed Green Cross Health. The agreement, announced to the stock exchange on Tuesday, would keep the country’s biggest enrolled patient base in New Zealand ownership and hand a growing share of the business to iwi investors.
The Doctors runs 65 clinics and looks after more than 400,000 enrolled patients, making it the largest single primary care network in the country. Under the conditional agreement, Green Cross Health would sell its entire medical division to Tend, while keeping its core pharmacy business trading under the Unichem and Life Pharmacy brands. Green Cross told RNZ the sale was subject to certain adjustments, including for net debt and net working capital, and would let the company refocus on pharmacy.
Tend Health was founded by Cecilia Robinson, who is best known for launching the meal kit company My Food Bag. She and her husband James Robinson are the two co chief executives of the business, which has built a model that combines bricks and mortar clinics with a nationwide app and telehealth platform. Tend currently runs about 25 clinics and serves more than 150,000 patients, and has grown by absorbing practices such as Symonds Street Medical Centre, the Pakūranga Medical Centre and the Better Health group.
Buying The Doctors would roughly triple the size of Tend’s clinic footprint in a single move, lifting the combined business to around 90 sites and well over half a million patients. For a company that started as a challenger brand promising shorter waits and online booking, it is a step up to the front rank of New Zealand primary care.
The deal is notable for who is paying for it. Tend is backed by a group of iwi and New Zealand investors, and the purchase would shift iwi from a minority position to a major shareholding in the enlarged company. Ngāi Tahu Holdings and Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei are both increasing their stakes, and a new shareholder, Nāti Growth, is coming onto the register. That makes the transaction one of the more significant pieces of Māori commercial investment in the health sector in recent years.
Cecilia Robinson said the backing reflected a long view of where primary care is heading. “We can really see this proposed investment reflecting a strong commitment from New Zealand investors and iwi for the long-term of primary care in this country,” she told Newstalk ZB. She pointed to Tend’s record of cutting waiting times at practices it has taken over. “We took over a rural practice in Ashburton, and within a few weeks their wait times had gone down from 26 days to five days on average,” she said.
James Robinson framed the purchase around continuity rather than disruption. “Our focus is on enhancing care and health outcomes, while supporting continuity for patients, clinical teams and local communities,” he said. For the 400,000 people enrolled at The Doctors, the message from the buyer is that their clinic, their GP and their appointments are meant to carry on as before.
That reassurance matters because primary care is under real strain. Many practices around the country have closed their books to new patients, rural towns struggle to recruit and retain GPs, and waiting times for a routine appointment have stretched out in plenty of places. A buyer promising to invest in technology, recruitment and access is pitching directly at those pressure points, although the test will be whether a larger network can deliver shorter waits across 90 clinics rather than a handful.
For Green Cross Health, the sale is a clean break from a part of the business it has decided is no longer core. The company said the proceeds would give it room to grow its pharmacy operations, and that its board had not yet decided what to do with the money. Options on the table include keeping some of it to invest in the pharmacy division and returning some to shareholders through a distribution or capital return. A decision would be made once the sale was complete.
The transaction is not yet done. It depends on Green Cross Health shareholders approving the sale at a meeting to be held in July, and subject to that approval the company expects the deal to settle at the end of July 2026. The full terms were lodged with the market in a stock exchange announcement, with both the buyer and seller framing it as a deal that keeps a major slice of New Zealand healthcare in local hands.
If it goes through, the country’s biggest GP network and one of its fastest growing digital health players will become a single business, owned by a mix of New Zealand investors and iwi, at a time when access to a family doctor has become one of the more pointed questions in the health system.
What do you make of the deal and the growing role of iwi investors in primary care? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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