Expatriates on High Risk Assignments: Best Practices in Pre-assignment Health Assessment Programs

As organizations expand global operations, there is heavy reliance on expatriates to drive their growth. While some industries have been performing pre-assignment medical examinations for years, others are just starting to see its value and the business necessity. 

Corporate duty of care obligations has made ensuring adequate mitigation of employee health risk a priority. Recent research assessing the clinical outcomes of over 94,000 expatriates based in more than 200 countries revealed that expatriates in high medical risk areas are nearly 25 more times likely to be medically evacuated than those in low risk countries. Not only is the frequency of cases increased by more local disease in high risk countries - such as malaria and other infectious diseases - but the lack of timely effective medical care often makes patient movement unavoidable when there is a clinical event. Even employees with simple chronic conditions may not be adequately treated, thus necessitating medical evacuation. For companies in global competitive markets, these programs have been critical, showing significant return on investment by limiting costly failed assignments. Expatriate populations in many industries are also aging, increasing the likelihood of on-site medical incidents, which make pre-assignment health assessments even more important. 

Medical Directors will summarize their international pre-assignment health programs and review the outcomes, issues and lessons learned. Actual case data and case studies will be reviewed and presented, along with recommendations for future best practice programs.