Rachel Dumont-Baber is balancing being a female single parent with running a successful customer centric business

For Rachel Dumont-Baber, being a Healthcare Practice Partner allows her the perfect work-life balance: she has a fulfilling, interesting career which she can fit around the needs of her 12 year old daughter.

Rachel has been a Healthcare Practice Partner helping customers fund their healthcare for nearly five years. She had run her own travel business but divorce and moving back to be close to her family in the north-west meant she needed a new direction.

A friend who was already a Healthcare Practice Partner suggested to Rachel that it could be just the flexible career she was looking for as she already knew and liked Healthcare Practice – "I was a policyholder already: being self-employed, private healthcare was essential" – it was an easy choice to make.

What was so important to Rachel was the ethical stance of Healthcare Practice. "The ethos of the company is that we treat clients as if they were our own family. Being a not-for-profit company means there are no shareholder interests to serve. The key is we do not profit from illness: so your customers always know that they come first".

And Rachel added: "I’m not from a sales background and to me, being a Partner is not about selling. We are providing a valuable service, one that complements the great work of the NHS. And when you find the best Healthcare Practice plan for your customer then you are providing a great service too".

As a single parent, it’s vital that Rachel’s work can adapt to her daughter Lydia’s needs: and working as a Healthcare Practice Partner offers just the work-life balance she needs. "I can fit my work around her – it’s totally flexible. Yes, the work is demanding but I like a challenge and you get out what you put in. There are many female partners and several of them are, like me, single mothers". Rachel’s keen to point out there’s a lighter side to working as a Partner: "We have fun too. I like reminding customers that it’s my job to put people in hospital".

Rachel said that the training and support from Healthcare Practice is excellent, and after the first week’s training there are regular workshops held in the regions, making them easy to attend. "I find the staff at the HQ fall over themselves to be helpful and supportive” she said. “It makes you feel part of the Healthcare Practice family."

"And that reflects on our work too: I don’t just sell a policy and forget about the customer – being the local face of Healthcare Practice I carry on taking care of them". For Rachel, that means checking on customers when they come out of hospital, and even extends to little things like sending cards or flowers if a customer’s has had a baby. "It’s about showing how, at Healthcare Practice, we are different from other health insurers. My role is to make my customers feel cared for, make them feel special: and that’s easy because to me, that’s just what they are".

By Charlotte Beugge

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