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Sarah Simpkins THE GP founder of online booking site Healthengine is taking his first break since he started work on the project in his lounge room almost 20 years ago .

Without giving dollar figures , he acknowledges he could retire with the money he has made .

In the beginning though , he says he earned little from the company , living on the hope that one day his stake would be worth something .

“ Let ’ s face it , a lot of these ventures do not go well ,” he tells AusDoc .

“ You can walk away with less than what you may have earned over the 10 or 15 years .

“ If you are a doctor looking to get into entrepreneurship , just looking at the money side by side , you may not end up better off or just marginally better off .”

He says the company , which now has around 9000 medical practice subscribers , having processed almost 75 million patient bookings , “ almost died ” a couple of times .

“ In healthcare , there are so many people who don ’ t want you to do what you are doing — in the sense that there are a lot of conservative incumbents who don ’ t want to see change .”

The concept came to him when he was sifting through paper directories of medical specialists , and he decided to join with another GP to build an online directory . The project failed . He then encountered another business , which had its own fledgling online directory , called Healthengine .

The business was failing too , but they handed control to Dr Marcus Tan .

“ Effectively , we rebooted the whole thing , again out of my lounge room , in around 2009 ,” he says . “ But we kept the name : Healthengine .” The “ missing piece ”, which he had to complete to make Healthengine work , was listing each doctor ’ s available appointment times .

He says it was very rudimentary at the start , and during those early days , Dr Tan was still working full-time as a GP .

He says the stress of the startup company weighed on him more than the medical decisions .

“ It is stressful enough to punt your own money on something like this .

“ But when you have raised money , you are dealing with other people ’ s money ; that makes it additionally stressful .

“ You do feel an obligation to make sure the people get a good return on their money and also get a good experience of working with you .

“ And that is not always easy because everybody has their own agendas and their own motivations .”

Healthengine became a rare GP business , a financially successful venture .

But then in 2020 , it ran into the ACCC . The watchdog investigated claims that Healthengine was doctoring patient reviews of GP practices , not publishing patients ’ star ratings for practices if they were not positive and misleading patients over use of their data when they booked appointments .

In terms of the doctoring , it was mainly about edits .

For instance , one patient originally wrote : “ The practice is good . All the doctors I ’ ve seen there are good apart from [ doctor ’ s name ] ... She genuinely comes across like you are wasting her time .”

Dr Marcus Tan .

This was whittled down to “ The practice is good . All the doctors I ’ ve seen there are good ” and posted on the clinic ’ s webpage .

Another submitted : “ I will use this practice if I have no other option . Receptionist was lovely , but the wait and then the doctor checking text messages and not seeming connected with us was disappointing .”

This was published as , “ Receptionist was lovely .”

Patients who made bookings were asked if they wanted to “ speak to one of our private health insurance experts ”, a reference to third-party private health insurance brokers .

Dr Tan claims the $ 1.4 million fine for sharing patient data without informed consent came down to “ that one word — our ”.

“ That created the sense that it was a first

party rather than a third party . That was it .

“ While the consumer ticked the box and said we are happy to speak to somebody , the ACCC said it was vague whether it was a third party or Healthengine doing the comparison .”

The ACCC also fined Healthengine $ 1.2 million for the patient review edits and a further $ 300,000 for not publishing bad ratings for practices .

Dr Tan says the rating system was the result of practices being hesitant to buy a Healthengine subscription because of concerns patients would post reviews that were defamatory .

“ Basically , we had one moderator , who did not fully understand the moderation guidelines that we had put in place ,” he says .

“ This did not happen with very many reviews , by the way , but it still happened .

“ We would create a situation where someone would say : ‘ The doctors were great , but the waiting room was a bit dirty .’

“ And they [ the moderator ] were just looking for the positive comments to be able to demonstrate this was a good

‘ In healthcare , … there are a lot of conservative incumbents who don ’ t want to see change .’ practice . So they would just say : ‘ The doctors were great .’

“ That was in breach of our own internal moderation guidelines , but it was not picked up because we had hundreds of thousands of reviews .

“ When we found out that was an issue , we wanted to fix it . But by that time , it was deemed by the ACCC as potentially misleading .”

The allegations were reported first in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age , but Dr Tan says the media coverage “ did not necessarily reflect what was actually happening ”.

“ It is easy to draw a headline that makes it more than what it is .

“ There is a lot of stuff that , without thinking too hard about it , without spending enough time looking at it and speaking to the right people , you can draw conclusions .

“ But as a CEO , you spend a lot of time trying to rebuild your trust and reputation , which is not fun .” Healthengine has weathered the storms . As for Dr Tan ’ s plans now ? He will keep working as a GP . But beyond that , there are no plans .

“ I had a personal idea that at the age of 50 — I am turning 50 this year — I would step back and just do something different ,” he says .

“ Yes , the past few years have been tricky and tough , with the pandemic . “ But nothing specific has triggered it . “ I have spoken to a few people who have been in similar situations , and the general feedback has been , if I can afford to take an extended break , I should do that .

“ Personality-wise , a lot of founder – CEO types want to just do stuff , to get on the horse and go again .

“ I am not that different , but I will try to resist the urge to jump onto something too quickly .”

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