International Private Medical Insurance (PMI) plans offer invaluable access to the best medical provision available.

Key Components
Emergency medical evacuation and repatriation is one of the most vital features of an international PMI plan. This should be offered as standard on any table of benefits. There are many places in the world where there are no medical treatment facilities or the standard of medical treatment is very poor. The situation does not even have to be this extreme: In some places, there is no specialist knowledge or expertise to treat certain conditions. For example, in areas such as Central Africa, the Pacific Rim and some less populated areas of Asia and South America, good medical facilities can often be many miles away.

Employees want to know that they will get appropriate medical treatment if required, even if the treatment is not available in the place where they live. Although the emergency evacuation benefit is not used as frequently as many others, it is one of those life-lines: if the need for emergency evacuation does arise, the patient will be thankful that their insurance covered it.

Things to watch out for
There are a lot of differences between the products offered by International PMI providers:

• Some products only cover evacuation and not repatriation
• Some only provide transportation out of the country of residence for the patient and one other insured person, but no accommodation costs for the accompanying person and no return transportation costs back into the country of residence.
• Some cover transportation costs both ways for the patient and accompanying person but no accomodation costs for the accompanying person.
• Some cover transportation costs both ways and accommodaition costs for the insured person and the accompanying person.
• Some plans cover transportation costs both ways and accommodation costs for the patient and all their dependants. Having your family with you at this time can reduce the stress on the patient and their family and help speed you recovery.

You should also consider these points:

• The past experience of an insurance provider in dealing with emergency evacuations - ask for examples of previous cases.
• Which emergency and assistance companies the insurance provider uses.
• The procedures for dealing with an emergency evacuation.

One of the most important points to remember is that most medical conditions can be managed locally. There are only a small number of cases where evacuation is required. Taking a patient to a specialist centre is potentially dangerous and always expensive. The medical staffs involved in evacuating patients are specialists professionals, ready to take action at all times, and the equipment used needs to be light weight, compact, robust and battery operated.

An Essential Lifeline
Here is one example of a case where emergency evacuation saved a life. An air ambulance was sent to Mopti in Mali. The situation was extremely urgent: the patient , a tour leader had accidently dived from a boat into a two foot section of the lake and suffered severe neck injuries. The patient was led from the site of the accident to the nearest 'hospital' on a board on the back of a pick-up truck. At the hospital, which consisted of a breeze block building with a corregated iron roof, the patient was placed on a wooden table which was to be his bed. Medical supplies were negligable and the light was provided from a single bulb running from a generator. The patient, although paralyzed from the waist down, was not even catherterised.

Meanwhile, the other group leader called the International Helpline from the nearest telephone and the duty doctor was consulted to get a verbal diagnosis. The decision was a simple one: the patient had to be evacuated by air ambulance immediately. The time was approximately 1800 hours and it was vital that the action was taken that evening to ensure the patient was evacuated first thing in the morning. An air ambulance was organised and ultimately landed in Tombouctou, one hour north of the hospital, at daybreak.

When employees are in situations like these, it is essential to have a good medical evacuation benefit. Don't let your clients take this for granted: make sure they understand what they are getting.