Periodic health appraisals for employees in business and industry are desirable and effective. Male executives over the age of 40 constitute the group most in need of them. Examinations of the kind done for private patients, including careful history-taking and thorough physical observation, are the most reliable, economical and productive.Undesirable factors to be guarded against in these examinations are unnecessary hospitalization, excessive laboratory and radiologic procedures and absence of rapport between examiner and examinee.Ideally, the results of the examination should be made known to the employee only-not to the employer except with the stated permission of the employee.