PBN BUSINESS WOMEN AWARDS 2020 WOMAN TO WATCH, PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: Tara DeMoura | Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island
TARA DEMOURA HAS GAINED broad and deep experience in her two decades at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island in order to get significant deals done.
DeMoura, recently promoted to vice president of employer segment, is particularly proud that she led the team that brought in two major clients, the state of Rhode Island and Lifespan Corp. Together, the two entities represent more than 50,000 newly insured individuals.
“I led the team responsible for the implementation,” DeMoura said. “The state of Rhode Island [account] was probably more of an accomplishment since we … had less than five months to implement; typically, we get at least nine months to onboard a client the size of the state of Rhode Island.”
DeMoura said her role as leader was to help drive the team to meet “incremental milestone dates.” The team also worked to remove barriers and ensure resources were available and aligned to the work, given the short time frame the group had to work with to bring in the new clientele, she said.
Calling those accomplishments “truly historical and monumental,” Blue Cross Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer Melissa Cummings said DeMoura’s contributions were extremely important to the outcome.
“She was the architect of building a unique customer service model that combines dedicated customer service with dedicated clinical resources for each of those [new] accounts,” Cummings said.
In 2016, after being promoted into her role as vice president of operations, DeMoura assessed operations and discovered Blue Cross was not meeting the diverse needs of its commercial and Medicare customers, given its divergent regulatory guidelines.
She subsequently restructured the team, which impacted more than 150 Blue Cross associates by creating new leadership positions – one for Medicare operations and one for commercial operations. DeMoura also realigned all teams and resources by market segment and modified job descriptions for many roles, and developed specific market-segment operational reports allowing Blue Cross to consistently measure performance.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, DeMoura described her greatest challenge as “managing the fast-paced day-to-day needs.” DeMoura said that she must “be agile and pivot” from one conversation around call-center servicing to sales to marketing tactics to what’s driving claims expense.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has created a significant challenge not only for [Blue Cross but], for all businesses across Rhode Island,” DeMoura said, noting that Blue Cross is working hard to balance supporting the needs of all its stakeholders.
