Climate Change Risk, Risk Management and Resiliency Planning

As the world encounters more severe and frequent natural disasters and damaging weather events, Labcorp’s ability to identify, plan for and react to these events has become even more critical.

At Labcorp, our focus is on the health, safety and resilience of our people, patients, customers, property and the research community. To support this focus, we maintain a comprehensive Business Resilience program aligned to the International Organization for Standardization: Security and resilience—Business continuity management systems— Requirements (ISO 2230 (ISO 22301:2019 Security and resilience). The Business Resilience program includes business continuity and disaster recovery assessments and planning to prepare our business and technology teams to respond to adverse events and crisis management to lead our response when those adverse events happen. We leveraged these plans to respond to global, regional and local events over the last several years to support the continued resilience of our people, patients and customers.

Risk and opportunity identification processes are incorporated throughout Labcorp’s overall existing risk management framework. Risk assessments are undertaken annually with third-party insurers to model catastrophes such as hurricanes, earthquakes, inland flooding and storm surges. We also partner with these providers to evaluate local conditions and implement mitigation measures. For example, risk management teams identified certain locations in California as within wildfire zones, and installed sprinkler systems inside and around the perimeter of those facilities.

Our Operations

Labcorp regularly reviews identified risks and creates scenarios to determine potential outcomes. Based on these scenarios, we create business continuity plans for risks and crisis management plans for events that could impede Labcorp’s ability to do business. These plans are reviewed and updated on an ongoing basis. These risks are categorized, prioritized and reviewed at the business unit level and major risks are ultimately reported to the Board of Directors. Crisis advisory teams are appointed at sites in advance and teams practice event preparation on a regular basis.

Risks are also reviewed top-down through a risk management program. Led by Enterprise Risk Management leadership, this group examines larger systemic issues and how they may impact Labcorp. This includes risks that may impact Labcorp’s reputation and brand value and newly identified short- and long-term risks to physical assets. This group also evaluates Labcorp’s preparedness for these scenarios and recommends processes and procedures to improve Labcorp’s performance. risk management, EHS, facilities and real estate leaders meet annually to examine risk trends and determine processes and measures to further reduce risk in the organization.

In parallel to dedicated risk management efforts, EHS also assesses climate change risks and opportunities on an ongoing basis for reporting to clients, customers and investors. EHS works with third-party consultants to help identify long-term climate trends and implement measures to mitigate risk.

Our business continuity practices, such as diverting specimens and using a network of vendors to procure equipment to keep our employees safe and operations running, minimized the impact of these events.