The growth of a Wollongong-based veteran healthcare organisation has led to a company restructure while marking its fifth year in business.
Provocatus, which was founded in 2020 with the goal of improving the health of Australian veterans, now comprises three business units overseen by a newly formed parent company, Aeternal Group.
The Aeternal Group businesses are DNH Logistics, Starlight Technology Solutions and healthcare company Provocatus.
CEO Kasey Mumford said the restructure was a necessary step in helping the company continue with its goal of improving the lives of veterans.
“Provocatus began as a small pharmaceutical company focused on eliminating the barriers ADF veterans face accessing alternative therapies for service-related chronic pain and mental health conditions. Our restructure recognises our headcount growth and an expansion of our service offerings to markets beyond healthcare,” Mumford said.
“Provocatus’ services began evolving with the establishment of our Veteran Access Scheme, which added medical appliances, wellness consultations and healthcare education to our offerings.
“We’re sharing the knowledge of some of Australia’s leaders in veteran healthcare though our National Community of Practice webinars, which are presented and attended by a wide range of healthcare professionals.”
The company’s growth saw it create new horizontally integrated entities to manage its own inventory and workloads and those of external companies.
“Our growing need for pharmaceutical-standard logistics led to us standing up our own company, originally named DNH Medical, which was initially established for the management of pharmaceutical goods including Schedule 8 medicines,” Mumford said.
“We have since reimagined the company’s capabilities and renamed it DNH Logistics, recognising that there are strong parallels between the security requirements for the transfer and storage of scheduled medicines with other sensitive goods.”
“Additionally, our growing data connectivity requirements led to the recent formation of our own technology company, Starlight Technology Solutions. Starlight not only looks after our internal integration requirements but is also focused on developing innovative digital solutions for our customers.
“Importantly to us, all of our businesses are managed in a way that veterans and their family members can work and thrive with us.”
Community partnerships have also served as an important part of the company’s activities.
“Someone I trust and respect once said to me, “If you do good things, the rest will follow” and this has served as a philosophy for how we relate to our stakeholders, including charity groups,” Mumford said.
“So far, we’ve proudly worked with charities including the Krait Foundation, the Navy Clearance Divers’ Trust, ForgeThrough, the Special Operations Engineer Regiment Association, Pillars for Pilgrims and we’re open to working with others which prioritise the wellbeing and advancement of Australian veterans.
“We’re currently sponsoring the training of service dogs to support veterans with PTSD through LifeUnleashed by Integra Service Dogs.
“We have exciting times ahead. I can’t wait to see what we can achieve for our customers, partners and our team during the next five years under the Aeternal Group structure,” she said.
Aeternal Group is the Veteran-led Australian parent company of Provocatus, DNH Logistics and Starlight Technology Solutions.
Grown from Provocatus, which was founded in 2020 with the mission of improving health outcomes for Australian Veterans, Aeternal Group has expanded to offer a range of complimentary services.
Provocatus provides comprehensive healthcare for veteran-specific health issues, support for Veteran-serving doctors and clinicians and guidance for companies focused on the wellbeing of Veteran staff.
DNH Logistics provides secure, technology-enabled logistics for healthcare, military and industries requiring security and reliability.
Starlight Technology Solutions provides customer-focused technologies, to support the activities of the Aeternal Group and beyond.