Fresh eyes for companies that are all heart
The CEO of a major international company falls ill for the second time in two years. The first illness, quickly diagnosed and effectively treated, resulted in little disruption to daily business operation. The executive vice president and chief operating officer of this $50 billion per year multinational only needed to supplement the CEO’s skills for a short time. The board and rank-and-file employees marveled at the CEO’s resilience and proudly touted the company’s loyalty to its wounded leader.
The second disease was much more shocking. After a brief 12 months of wellness, the CEO began making erratic decisions. Profitable outlets were ordered closed, while unprofitable outlets scheduled to close were allowed to limp like an economic drain. Stock prices began to fall and investor confidence with it. There had always been a corporate culture that the Board liked to be “family”. The management team and the Board of Directors itself were torn between the need to save the business and the desire not to abandon a colleague.
How does the business balance these two seemingly opposite ends?
Business consultants, financial consultants, business professionals, and even HR professionals are well-versed in optimizing daily operations, supporting business processes in the face of internal and external adversities, and even managing of leadership problems. However, when the issue is medically related and fitness-for-duty decisions at the highest level of a corporation may involve the review of highly confidential and even devastating personal medical information, the most hardcore employers begin to shy away from the problem.
The Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA) limits the information that companies and even doctors can review and share regarding a patient’s health. When a corporate leader is also a patient, doctors often come clean again, even with a signed medical information release. Companies are all too willing to pay for “fitness for work” tests, often without realizing that such tests have limited scope and even more limited scientific validity. In short, they are legal landmines.
For those companies that understand these limitations, dealing with medically disabled leadership becomes even more difficult. In these special situations, the use of a non-treating independent medical adviser (NIMA) for the Board or corporate leadership is the ideal legal solution.
NIMA – The eyes of experience
A non-treating independent medical consultant is a physician who is an expert in observational physical examination. The depth of their experience allows them to observe people as they go through their workday and draw conclusions about decision-making ability, information retention, and physical impairments. Additionally, a NIMA can assess the impact of the medical condition on the rest of the management team. A family, like any other social structure, including a close-knit management team, is affected by a serious or debilitating illness as much as the individual suffering from it. It stands to reason that when a serious illness strikes a corporate leader, the management team and the company as a whole will suffer.
NIMA finds itself with one foot in the business world and one foot in the medical world. Through observation and interviews with third parties, NIMA can not only identify changes that have occurred in management culture to accommodate the disease, but also make recommendations for reasonable accommodations that partially or fully ameliorate the effect of the disease within the business and , most importantly, within business leadership. NIMA is also able to document and validate when reasonable accommodation will not allow the organization to return to its pre-illness baseline.
Because they do not have a doctor-patient relationship with the affected leader, HIPAA regulations do not apply to their observations, therefore these observations and inferences drawn from them are freely shared with Board members and corporate leadership within the constraints of the company. human resources standards and professional ethics. In these circumstances, NIMA may recommend the reassignment or medical leave of the affected individual to allow normalization of business operations while they continue their employment.
In addition to keeping one foot in the medical world, NIMA can advocate with the Board and corporate leadership for action that would be in the best interest of the average patient suffering from the same disease as their afflicted corporate leader. NIMA, based on clinical experience in treating real-world patients, may recommend outside training and outside placement of the sick person on a temporary or permanent basis to provide the best chance for that person to regain their own health. In this way, the best interests of both the corporation and the individual are expressed and cannot be served.
a sigh of relief
The $50 billion a year multinational corporation hired a non-treating independent medical adviser. NIMA reviewed the CEO’s stock performance, corporate reports, memos, and non-confidential corporate communications over the past two years. NIMA noted that the executive assistant to the CEO spent most of the day acting as a non-certified nursing assistant and an executive vice president reviewed all of the CEO’s decisions and instructions. The CEO’s physical appearance showed that the disease had caused much more muscle loss and weakness than the fitness-for-duty test or the CEO’s own reports of her medical condition had indicated. The CEO took a 20- to 30-minute nap every two hours, often ending her workday after 8 to 9 hours compared to her previous habit of 12 to 14 hours a day.
NIMA also noted that on days when the CEO was away, the management team was much more focused and seemed generally happy and less confrontational in their interactions with each other. NIMA informed the Board of these findings and recommended temporary medical leave, under the federal Family Medical Leave Act or for outside training and placement. Based on NIMA’s recommendations, the CEO was given both options. In these private meetings, the CEO admitted to not being able to retire despite a generous retirement package due to the CEO’s own sense of loyalty to the company. Much to the CEO’s relief, retirement was now an option as the Board voted unanimously in favor of full retirement even though the CEO was 13 months shy of his 30th birthday.
Following the CEO’s retirement, a new CEO was appointed and within 6 months, the unprofitable divisions had been closed. Previously closed profitable divisions were restarted or absorbed into existing operations. Corporate profits had returned to levels that existed before the CEO’s illness, and the stock price had rebounded to its previous all-time high. A year later, the company’s stock price had resumed its previous continuous upward trend, and the corporation had fully recovered from its own illness.
For companies caught between their desire to support a loyal executive and the needs of corporate responsibility, the fresh eye of a Non-Treating Independent Medical Consultant allows these companies to remain wholehearted.