Zeena’s First Call
Zeena Nartker has been at Abbott for 11 years. She is a manager over supervisor onboarding and development at the Columbus, Ohio nutrition manufacturing site.
“When I started at Abbott, I was fresh out of college,” she says. “I didn’t know what benefits I needed, whether our benefits were good or not. I didn’t pay anything per month, so I thought they were decent, but I didn’t know what that meant truly.”
That changed when she and her husband were expecting their son, William.
During pregnancy, Zeena and her husband learned that William had spina bifida. This condition caused William’s spine to not form completely and involves an extensive surgery to repair either before or after birth. Their initial doctor recommended waiting until after birth — but Zeena wanted a second opinion.
“That was really when we started to understand and look at what our benefits would look like,” she says. “We knew at that point that he was going to be medically complex and that would require a lot of doctor’s appointments and sort of an unknown future at the time.”
Her benefits gave her real options. When she asked for help finding a second opinion, she was quickly given a list of in-network doctors she could reach out to that offered different options and could walk her through the process differently. That’s how Zeena found her maternal fetal medicine (MFM) doctor.
“She was awesome,” Zeena says. “She was a lifesaver for us.”
It was the first time Zeena realized her benefits were more than just coverage. They were a door to choices — choices that would matter enormously in the years to come.
William was born premature at 28 weeks. His lungs were fragile, and any illness could mean a long hospital stay. Just before his first birthday, the family was traveling when he started coughing and wheezing. She knew he needed breathing treatments — but she didn’t know where to take him.
That was her first call to Abbott’s care coordinators.
“I reached out to them to understand which hospital nearest to us was going to be considered in-network. Obviously it was urgent. We knew we wanted to get somewhere quickly but didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg. The care coordinators were very quick to respond and help us get to where we needed to go.” – Zeena Nartker
It wouldn’t be the last time.
When William was about 18 months old, Zeena had been paying medical bills without questions as they came until a $3,000 hospital bill arrived after a surgery and gave her pause.
“At that point I was like, okay, this is getting excessive, and I don’t know how I’m going to pay this, truthfully,” she says.
Once again, she called the care coordinators. They spotted the issue immediately. “They were like, ‘Oh yeah, it looks like something wasn’t processed correctly. We’ll call the hospital. Are you okay with us calling them on your behalf? We’ll get this taken care of,'” Zeena recalls. “I never heard about that bill again.”
For someone who had previously spent hours on the phone bouncing between hospitals and insurance, the relief was profound.
That experience changed how Zeena approached every benefit question that followed, including when her triplets were born two years later. When a billing mix-up surfaced there too, she didn’t hesitate. “They’re now my first call,” she says. “I know I don’t have to go through something like this by myself or have to try and navigate our insurance system without their help.”
That support became especially important when William needed his first wheelchair.
Zeena had been warned by other parents in her support group that insurance approval can take six months or more. So when she received his wheelchair referral, she braced for the worst. After a month with no update, she called the supplier, who said they were waiting on insurance. So she called the care coordinators.
They found the approval and resent it. William had his wheelchair within a month and a half.
“As a parent with a child with a disability, that’s huge. Just that peace of mind to know that if I’m stuck somewhere, I can reach out and know that there’s somebody to help push something through.”
For Zeena, the difference wasn’t just in having benefits. It was knowing there was someone she could turn to when the next question, bill or decision came up. And in her current role leading onboarding for new supervisors, she makes sure the people coming up behind her know that help is there too.
“If anyone comes in and says, ‘Hey, I have this hospital bill, I don’t know,’ I’m like, call the care coordinators,” she says. “They are lifesavers. They will help you. They will deal with both sides of it. Let them be the ones to sit on the phone.”
It’s the advice she wishes more colleagues had heard sooner.
“If you have a question about it, ask,” she says. “Don’t sit in the dark. If you’ve never had to interact with benefits and you have this crazy life event come up, ask the question. Somebody’s been through it before you, and somebody can help walk you through it.”
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