Premera Blue Cross has completed a $12 million expansion at its East Spokane campus and is continuing to increase its staff there as it works toward its goal of eventually adding 250 workers as a result of the project.


The Mountlake Terrace, Wash.-based health-care insurer says it has hired about 60 employees here since starting the expansion two years ago, and now employs a total of 440 people at its two Spokane locations. Now that the 45,000-square-foot expansion of its complex at 3900 E. Sprague is complete, it is moving roughly 120 employees there from its space at the Northpointe Office Building on Spokanes North Side, says Deana Strunk, its Bend, Ore.-based spokeswoman.


Premera plans to close its North Side location and make its facility on East Sprague, which now has 115,000 square feet of office space, its only Spokane operation, Strunk says.


The nonprofit insurer announced its expansion plans here in July 2005, and said that in conjunction with the project, it planned to add up to 250 jobs here. Strunk says Premera plans to hire the remaining 190 additional employees within two years, which would give it 630 people in all, and has ongoing open positions.


The jobs available at Premera pay an average salary of $35,000, plus benefits, and include positions in claims, customer service, membership, and billing, she says.


At the time it announced the expansion, Premera said that two of the main reasons behind its decision to expand here, rather than elsewhere, were the Spokane areas population growth and its large pool of qualified workers. The number of employees Premera has been able to hire here over the past couple of years has validated its decision, Strunk says.


Weve been able to draw from the available work force as weve needed to add folks, and thats really important to our service level and keeping at capacity and staying efficient, she says. We expect that to continue to be the case, and the speed at which we fill those positions will depend on our business growth.


Premera, which has offices in Seattle and Alaska in addition to here, also chose to expand in Spokane as part of its strategy to operate offices in diverse locations, Strunk says. The insurer believes that in scenarios involving disaster recovery, such as if an earthquake struck the Puget Sound region, it could rely on its offices elsewhere temporarily, she says.


Having geographically diverse climates and locations for the business made sense, so the offices wouldnt be prone to the same weather and other conditions, she says.


A $700,000 contribution from Washington states Economic Development Strategic Reserve Account also helped persuade Premera to expand here. When Premera announced the project in 2005, Gov. Chris Gregoire said she decided to help fund the project because of the importance of health care to Spokanes economy and because of the jobs that the expansion would create here.


Premera has roughly 300,000 members in Eastern Washington and is part of a family of companies that serve more than 1.6 million members in Washington, Alaska, Oregon, and Arizona.


Contact Emily Brandler at (509) 344-1265 or via e-mail at emilyb@spokanejournal.com.