Prevention programmes for travelling employees
First of all, prevention programmes go through different types of acts. Therefore, please find here after 3 of them.
Prevention through vaccination
Corporate vaccination programmes support organisations in fulfilling their legal responsibilities for the health of employees working abroad and emphasises an organisation’s commitment to the well-being of employees asked to work abroad. However, also expatriate illness is expensive. If it necessitates repatriation of a key employee and their family, it can cost between $500,000 and $1,000,000.
Vaccination programmes can be cost-efficient. For example, an employee bound for East Africa would be likely to receive vaccinations against yellow fever, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria, measles and rubella at an estimated cost of $350. In general, appropriate vaccination costs $200-400; broader health screening costs $500 per year, on average. Given a population of 100 expatriates, six repatriations are expected per year at a cost of $3,600,000 (six repatriations at a typical cost of $600,000). An effective screening programme will cost less than 2,0% of this figure ($50,000 a year, one $500 screening for each of the 100 expatriates).
Prevention for Malaria
An impact study of malaria conducted by SCB-Lafarge35, a French company from the construction sector with 540 employees (mostly local workers), indicates that malaria was responsible of 50% of the absenteeism within its staff in Benin (900 workdays lost a year) and 42% of the medical consultations (3,400 consultations a year). The cost of malaria has been estimated around €42,175 per year including the workdays
lost (€16,800), diagnostic and medication (€14,175), medical staff costs (€11,200).
The estimation of the cost of the prevention programme was calculated taking into account the following costs components: supply of bednets, education programme, and supply of a quick diagnostic test kit. The total cost per employee per year was estimated at €4,5 to €7 per year. This estimation represents a yearly cost for the prevention programme of €7,500. The avoided costs generated by the programme were estimated at €16,395 (50% avoided absenteeism and avoided medical costs).
The cost of malaria with the prevention programme decreased to €33,280 a year. This represents a return on investment of 119%.
Pre-travel health screening
The study conducted by Dr. Myles Druckman and Carl Spitznagel aimed at understanding the effectiveness and financial benefit of pre-assignment health assessment programmes organised for international travelling and long-term assignment employees.
The programme contains a self-assessment questionnaire (on-line) and a health examination by a medical staff. The results of the on-line programme were the following:
- for 68% of the employees no follow up was required,
- 10% of the cases were review by the medical director,
- 4% of the employees required a medical exam.
The questionnaire programme identified and positively intervened to limit or prevent the failure of an assignment for medical reasons. The researchers considered 1,5% of the cases a “critical intervention” or a “save”, respectively “a non-urgent and controllable health issue for which the medical staff has positively intervened to help the employee manage the issues in order to limit potential business disruption and productivity impacts” and “a serious, potential life threatening medical illness that has been identified which if not addresses would have likely resulted in a medical evacuation and/or failed assignment”.
First, the on-line programme permitted the identification of 16 «critical interventions» and 3 “save”. Also, the cost of a critical intervention was estimated as the avoided loss of eight work days at $1,500 per day and the cost of a “save” as being equal to the avoided assignment failure, where financial consequences for the company were estimated at $500,000.
The cost of the programme includes the use of the on-line questionnaire and the medical staff that supported the programme. As table 18 shows, the total avoided costs exceed the cost of the programme by far. This means that each $1 invested in the programme offered a return of $9,34.
Download the study.
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