The newest C-suite job is chief medical officer
25 August 2020
There's a hot new executive position at big companies: chief medical officer.
Why it matters: The coronavirus exposed a slew of vulnerabilities within our society, and one of them was the inability of large corporations to protect workers. Now, many firms are putting physicians in their C-suites to address some of those problems.
- "In the past, there was a focus on workplace safety, and, naturally, there wasn’t as large of a focus on public health and infectious disease," says Daniel Castillo, chief medical officer at Matrix Medical Network, who has been consulting with food industry giant Tyson Foods on its coronavirus response.
- "What the coronavirus has done is really open that up as an area that organizations need to think about."
Driving the news:
- Tyson — which faces lawsuits from employees who say they were sickened at its plants — is currently looking for an in-house CMO.
- Royal Caribbean Cruises has added a CMO amid the pandemic, per the Wall Street Journal.
- Australian retail behemoth Woolworths Group recently brought in a medical executive as well.
Even companies that aren't putting doctors in executive positions have partnered with health care companies or hired medical consultants to get through the crisis, says Brian Kropp, head of Gartner's human resources practice.
The bottom line: "It requires a lot of effort for us to keep our employees safe," says Scott Brooks, who leads COVOD testing strategy at Tyson. "COVID isn’t going away anytime soon, and then we're thinking, 'What's the next COVID?'"
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.