Beacon courier honored as “HomeCare Hero” for dedication to patients

Tim Weiss thrives on his interactions with patients as a long-time courier driver at Beacon. His exchanges with customers go well beyond his dropping medications at their door.

Weiss has brought in mail, walked customers’ pets and delivered medications during snow storms and after hours. He’s told his wife that the patients’ needs come first when he has to take those difficult calls. “I don’t think twice,” he said. “You gotta love your patients and be patient [with them]. They’re ailing and need your help.”

In 2019, Weiss noticed one of the regular patients he serves hadn’t brought her newspaper or mail inside her home for several days.

Despite police checking in on her, Weiss had a gut feeling something was still wrong after the medication he delivered remained on her porch.

The pharmacy reached out to her emergency contact, who went by her house to check again, It turned out that the client had fallen and had developed a life-threatening case of sepsis. “She’s that kind of person that doesn’t really go to people for help or ask for help,” Weiss said. “She only had 24 hours left.” Experts estimated that Weiss’s intervention actually extended his patient’s life for another seven months.

Weiss was recently honored as a HealthCare Hero for 2021 by HomeCare Magazine, a national publication of Birmingham, Ala.-based Cahaba Media Group. The excerpts above are taken from the November article featuring the Beacon courier.

He was one of 11 people chosen by the magazine to represent the best in the industry. Click here to read the entire HomeCare Magazine story.

One of our finalists may have said it best when they pointed out that the health care system believes that care ends with discharge from the hospital—but in reality, care begins at that moment. … Every one of our finalists goes well beyond their job description.

Trudy Wait, Beacon Home Care pharmacy manager, shares how Tim always goes above and beyond for our patients.

“We frequently hear how appreciative they are of Tim,” Wait says. “Our home infusion patients are always telling us how kind and wonderful he is and how it brings them comfort to know that he will be delivering their meds.”

It can be uncomfortable to have a stranger come to your home — especially when you are ill, she says. But Tim always puts them at ease.

“No matter what we ask of him, he always comes through with a smile. Many of our deliveries are time and temperature sensitive, and our staff feels confident knowing Tim is handling the delivery,” she says.

And the story highlighted by the HomeCare Magazine article, Wait says, provides the perfect description of the greatest impact Tim has had as our courier.

“If he hadn’t gone the extra step to follow up on the patient,” she says, “the outcome could have been tragically different. Tim has such a positive attitude and is always willing to help. He will stop whatever he is doing and come back for a stat delivery and never complains. He knows the importance of customer service and makes it a priority.”