Help was Just a Phone Call Away for Three Generations of a Baxter Family
Working in customer service, where a routine night at work can suddenly become much more, members of a Baxter family spanning three-generations have each helped save patient lives.
Ruth Beiswenger has been a customer service representative for 16 years, taking orders, working with the sales team and solving problems. Her daughter Laura is part of the Customer Master team, ensuring account information is always accurate and meets regulatory guidelines. Recently promoted to a role in Government Contracts, Laura’s daughter Rachel spent her first three years at Baxter working directly with dialysis patients to help coordinate delivery of their life-saving supplies.
A hospital called me about a patient facing a life and death situation who needed a product in two hours. We helped save a life. There is no greater feeling.
Ruth Beiswenger, Customer service representative
“Urgent calls are part of what we do,” Ruth says. “A hospital called me about a patient facing a life and death situation who needed a product in two hours.” Ruth reached Baxter’s warehouse and an employee there raced the product to the nursing staff. “We helped save a life. There is no greater feeling.”
Her daughter Laura coordinated deliveries by helicopters following 9/11. She worked all night during Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. She vividly remembers a call about a newborn baby boy who needed immediate continuous renal replacement therapy to survive. Laura located the tubing needed, woke up a warehouse staffer and managed to get the product from Los Angeles to New Jersey. “I cried myself to sleep hoping I’d done enough for that baby boy. A few days later I couldn’t help but call back the contact at the hospital to check to see how he was. He made it! I was so happy and felt very proud to be working for a company where I could have a direct impact on saving the life of a child.”
Laura’s daughter Rachel continued the family tradition of saving and sustaining lives. Again, a young dialysis patient needed supplies. His frantic mother called Baxter. Numerous calls to the patient’s peritoneal dialysis registered nurse, the warehouse staff and couriers delivered a happy outcome.
“Being a mother myself, this one hit home as I know if it were me in this situation I would have felt the same way. I believe empathy is one of the most important qualities to possess when working for Baxter,” she says.
All three believe deeply that everyone at Baxter is a partner in saving and sustaining lives, no matter the job they do. “People in R&D can develop and manufacture a drug, but without a Baxter account number and everything that happens in between we cannot get it to the patients. We all play a part and there is nothing I would rather do,” Laura says.