Corporate Risk & Responsibility: Legal Responsibilities; Medical Evacuations; Corporate Policies & Stress - Introdcutory Remarks, Seminar, April 28, 2000

Robert Carr, MD, Vice President and Corporate Medical Director, SmithKline Beecham, Philadelphia, PA

[Click to view Dr. Carr's slides]

DR. CARR: Thank you, and we'll be handing out some additional notes from the presentations.

I'm Dr. Bob Carr. I'm the corporate medical director for SmithKline Beecham and am moderator of this seminar. And as such, I think over the last two days we've been really blessed with having very, varied approaches and processes in the whole area of health management as it relates to travelers, inclusive of the psychosocial aspects of one's health.

Hopefully today we'll be able to put some of those ideas and thoughts together into a framework of what is a corporation's responsibility and role in managing and preventing, planning for, executing and managing these risks.

We have a panel with a wide variety of expertise who will be able to frame those issues.

In addition, in Tab 11 there are some case studies I hope you've had a chance to look at, but if not, they just provide the context, real-life case context behind a lot of the issues in formulating corporate policies, procedures, and practice.

I'll get this technology right. Again, we will focus on those roles within the corporations or large organizations along three main areas: along the medical services, the medical evaluation and evacuation, as well as the legal and administrative processes. We'll try to frame it, again, in a pre-event and an event and post-event management, try to give you some flavor as to how one should approach pre-trip or pre-movement or pre-event planning through post-event debriefing and changing and continuously improving a process in an organization—again, using the case studies more as context, and they're there for your background.

Before we actually introduce the panel, I thought we could review a series of questions. I'll highlight a couple—to frame some of the issues that may hit a corporate medical team or an outside consultant supporting a corporate medical team. Perhaps they will provide a different perspective as you listen to three different approaches within two different organizations and an outside consultant provide the framework for building appropriate policies within a corporation ensure appropriate responsibility.

DR. CARR: These questions are available on the Web with the proceedings. Let's begin. Our first two speakers actually will be the World Bank tag team of Shoba Nayar and David Rivero. Shoba, who has been introduced before and who spoke to us earlier yesterday, is a field health specialist in charge of country health services for the World Bank and has been doing this and other things for the World Bank for the last 18 years. And her co-presenter will be David Rivero, who is chief counsel in Administration for the entire World Bank area and has been with the World Bank for 14 years. So they do provide a very solid experience in both administering a medical services program for remote areas and the responsibility that the World Bank has for its employees and staff and their family, as well as some of the legal and administrative issues that the World Bank faces.

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