The Travel Doctor
Traveller's medical & vaccination centre
Travelling for Work
Introducing The Travel Doctor-TMVC “Departure Lounge”
Managing the Frequent Traveller
The Travel Doctor-TMVC Departure Lounge is a unique medical information service that enables employers to manage the health risks of frequent travellers, their personnel that travel regularly overseas in the course of their employment.
The service allows the frequent traveller to register a forthcoming trip on-line, & get advised by email whether they need to attend a clinic.
For most frequent travelers, who are up-to-date with vaccines, medical kit & insurance, they can avoid routinely attending a clinic, still receive important key health messages, & ensure that the organisation’s duty-of-care (and travel policy) are met, all without leaving their office!
The actual provision of pre-travel preparation is still done in the various clinics, including vaccination, prescription of antimalarials & medical kits, the conduct of examinations, & health education. By getting travelers up-to-date with an appropriate level of education, vaccination & medical supplies, companies ensure staff are protected. That information is transmitted from the clinics to a central database, so any enquiries from staff about further travel are done using all available information.
The Departure Lounge facility also allows traveling staff to access their vaccine records, have a portal for electronic communications with Travel Doctor medical staff, & update their personal medical files.
What are the benefits?
The benefits to the individual staff member of the Departure Lounge include:
• providing a system that can avoid the need to attend the clinic before each trip, ensuring more
efficient use of time in preparing for travel.
• know that their records are in one place, are current & are accessible 24 hours a day;
• are afforded peace of mind regarding their travel health status & concerns via the e-consult capabilities.
• facilitating compliance with OH&S requirements
The benefits to the organisation of the Departure Lounge include:
• effective management of frequent travellers, with centralised record keeping, giving efficient management of risks, reducing costs, & reducing potential legal exposures.
• it ensures that travel & trip details are rigorously documented & maintained as a quality assurance
check to make sure traveller vaccinations are current, allowing audit by organisations & facilitating
compliance with OH&S obligations
• permits the maintenance of contact information & up-to date health information in the event
the medical service provider needs to contact an individual while they are travelling or overseas;
• it allows the medical service provider to ensure continuity of care across a network of providers;
• it provides registered individuals & companies with access to secure communications &
‘e-consult’ facilities.
How does the Departure Lounge work?
The following steps outline the process of the Departure Lounge:
• Access to the Departure Lounge is facilitated by the organization requesting membership for its’
selected frequently-traveling staff.
• The Travel Doctor-TMVC establishes the appropriate profile for preparation of the frequent travelers
(based on destinations/activity/other organizational considerations) after detailed discussion with
the organization.
• Individual travellers are then initially seen at a Travel Doctor-TMVC clinic to get the primary
preparation. This ensures that all the relevant education messages are discussed, vaccines are
provided, suitable medical kit is provided & explained, documents are complete & any relevant
assessments can be done. It also ensures that all staff have the same high-quality preparation, &
meet the company’s requirements.
• The Travel Doctor-TMVC places the relevant data onto the Departure Lounge central database,
& provides individuals password access & instructions
• Subsequent travel is “logged” onto the Departure Lounge, & staff receive email advice about any
travel-health requirements.
• Only when a very different destination or activity profile necessitates specific vaccines or medications
are staff requested to attend the clinic.
• The Travel Doctor-TMVC bills the organisation annually on a per-capita basis.
While staff are away.
• Travellers can email The Travel Doctor-TMVC via the Departure Lounge to get general travel-health
advice while traveling, or even request a formal e-consultation (a formal on-line confidential consultation
– see following section)
• All the personal details are accessible to the individual, should they need to take them to a local health
care provider in their destination.
• Health alerts can be emailed to the travellers, eg outbreak news
How do you get The Travel Doctor-TMVC Departure Lounge?
Contact The Travel Doctor-TMVC National Client Manager, client.manager@traveldoctor.com.au
or contact your local Travel Doctor-TMVC clinic.
E-consultations & Health Alerts
The Travel Doctor’s corporate clients receive services significantly above & beyond the normal scope of travel medicine services. This includes access to ‘e-consultations’, often from remote areas. Such ‘e-consults’ serve several purposes, including:
• providing the frequent traveller with ‘peace-of-mind’ regarding non-acute health enquiries while overseas;
• as well as providing a mechanism that as much as possible keeps overseas personnel out of foreign
medical systems by acting as an advisory service or first port of call for such personnel.
E-consultations are essentially problem-specific email discussions directly with a senior Travel Doctor physician to address a particular medical matter. All correspondence related to a particular condition is considered part of the one e-consultation. This only applies to registrants of the Departure Lounge.
Departure Lounge registrants also have access being automatically advised via email of health alerts to specific countries while away.
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Learn about the medical requirements for your destination by checking out the Destination fact sheets
Other useful information can be found in the Travel health fact sheets
Work out your vaccine requirements by looking at the My Healthy Travel Planner
