Summer Internships: Wellmark Blue and Cross Blue Shield

By Phil Wirtjes

Greetings to all of you faithful followers of the HMP student blog! This is my first official foray into the blogosphere and I am happy to have you all along for the ride. This summer I am doing my internship at Blue Cross Blue Shield Wellmark in Des Moines. Wellmark is the largest insurer in the state of Iowa and South Dakota and has almost 2,000 employees at their corporate headquarters in downtown Des Moines. Although I am getting experience in a variety of departments within the company, my main preceptor resides within the large-group marketing department and is in charge of developing the insurance plan product for large group employers.

I have been kept extremely busy this summer working with a variety of different projects which include some of the following:
  • Creating a business plan for the development of a telemedicine product
  • Working with the Network Innovation department to fine-tune the ACO arrangements that Wellmark is currently engaged in
  • Testing and developing a consumer cost-estimator tool for different insurance plans
  • Providing a market analysis of the different mobile health strategies that insurance companies are utilizing

In addition to the everyday project work at Wellmark, I have been able to spend time getting to know various people within the company in order to get to know them better and gather their opinions about the future of the health insurance industry. Finally, Wellmark has multiple interns throughout the summer and has a program in place that allows for interns to get to know one another, which has been a really cool experience.

In my free time, I have been working diligently to secure tickets to the upcoming Justin Bieber concert in Des Moines this fall because there ain’t no party like a Bieber Fever party! Just kidding. In all seriousness though, Des Moines is a great city and has quite a bit going on to keep me busy including the Downtown Arts Festival, running on the trails around Grey’s Lake, and hanging out with the hipster crowd in the East Village.  There are also a surprising amount of great restaurants with my favorite being Zombie Burger. I highly recommend the burger with the macaroni and cheese infused bun known as “The Walking Ched”.

I am really enjoying my experience at Wellmark and taking full advantage of this opportunity to learn the inner workings of the health insurance industry. I can’t believe that it is already July but I am looking forward to the rest of the summer and returning to Iowa City to share stories with the rest of my classmates!

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