General News
Published March 15, 2021
It was a Friday night when a Premera team made the choice to go the extra mile for one of our members. A terminally ill Alaska member—a mother of three—was stuck in Seattle after being airlifted for a blood transfusion and wanted to return to Alaska to
live out her final days with her children.
As soon as they heard this news, customer service team members, Sirissa Greger and Deyna Weaver, began working to determine how Premera could help. Tracy Dobbs, customer service representative, contacted the member's brother to let him know that the Premera team would
do everything they could to get her back home. "I believe that people come into our lives for a reason, and this family reminded me that every single call, every word, and every effort matters so much to our members," Tracy said.
Jenny Yao, a leader from the clinical review team, was instrumental in partnering with customer service to make this all come together. "I communicated with my team that night to obtain the best evaluation about the situation in the short window we had,"
Jenny said. "We, along with customer service, clinical review leaders, and our medical director, worked together as one team to put forth our most thoughtful effort toward helping our member."
A turn of events
Together, the team worked for hours creating a plan and approving paperwork with the Seattle hospital. Then unfortunate news came–the usual medevac provider in Seattle was unable to bring the member home within the timeframe that she was given to live.
The team sprang into action to come up with a different plan, contacting another medevac company that was able to get our member out in the early morning Saturday. "After many phone calls and texts between all of us, we were ready to call it a day
around 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning," Sirissa said.
Tracy contacted the member's brother on Saturday morning to let him know his sister was coming home. On Saturday evening, our member safely made it home to be with her family for her final days.
Looking back
"When I think about that night, it was truly one of the times in my 16 years at Premera that I was presented with an opportunity to really live all our core values at once. In that moment, I put myself in our customer's position and did what I would want
someone to do for me, especially having young children," Deyna said.
"I will remember this for as long as I live, as this was a moment that Deyna, Jenny, Tracy, and I made healthcare work better and made a difference in this member's life," Sirissa said. "Her children got to hug their mom a few more times, and I will take
that with me forever."
Sadly, our member passed away a few days after returning home. But because of many people at Premera, she was able to spend her last few days with her family. "And that is something to be treasured," Sirissa added.
At Premera, we’re in your corner. That’s why our clinical and customer service teams worked together to make a difference for this family at a difficult time.
Just a few of our Premera team members:
(Pictured from left to right: Sirissa, Jenny, Tracy, Deyna)
