Summer Internship: PacificSource Health Plans
This summer I had the opportunity to intern for PacificSource Health Plans in Springfield, Oregon. PacificSource is an independent, not-for-profit community health plan that provides medical and dental benefits to more than 3,900 Northwest employers and covers more than 272,000 people with group and individual health insurance plans. The full-service organization has licensure in four states—Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Washington—and employs around 1,000 people.
My preceptor, Mr. Ken Provencher, President and CEO since 2001, helped make my experience with PacificSource excellent by ensuring I had ample opportunity to both work and interact with him and numerous other members of the Executive Management Group (EMG). In addition to bi-monthly one-on-one meetings with my preceptor, I was also very fortunate to get to attend the monthly EMG meetings and have individual meetings with almost all 28 members of the group. One of my favorite memories of the summer was getting to go to the annual EMG retreat held at Skamania Lodge. The retreat featured two days of extremely interesting strategic thinking and conversation, as well as a fantastic view of the Colombia Gorge.
For most of the internship I was heavily involved in helping the organization research and develop its Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) strategy. Specifically, I conducted the external research analyzing other insurer’s SDoH programs, technologies, and outcomes, ultimately presenting my research at an internal conference. Over the course of the summer I got to work on a number of other projects as well, including compiling biographies and key information for each federal delegate in the organization’s service areas, and preparing state-and key-market summary briefs.
Outside of work I had an awesome summer in the Pacific Northwest. It was a big year for my hometown of Corvallis, OR, as the Oregon State University baseball team won its third National Championship. Now we can only hope that some of that success rubs off on the football team. Corvallis is just about an hour and a half south of Portland, where I spent a fair number of my weekends visiting friends and sleeping on couches. A couple of weekends I traveled a little further north on I5 up to Seattle to watch the Mariners play. We’re just a few games back on the A’s in the wild card race now. I’m really hoping that this is the year!
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