Curative Shifts Gears to Innovate in Health Insurance
6 Minutes
Team Curative
Dec 14, 2022
In March 2020, when COVID-19 began to impact cities and states across the United States, Curative stepped up to fill an unmet need and began providing COVID-19 tests across the country. Looking back, we are proud to have succeeded in our mission to keep communities healthy and safe in a time of crisis.
After almost three years and over 35 million tests administered in over 40 states, Curative COVID-19 testing is coming to a close by the end of December 2022.
We want to thank all of our partners and patients for their support and trust. We couldn’t have done this without you, and we hope to serve your health care needs again in the future.
After our site closures, if you’re seeking COVID-19 services, you can use this resource to find services near you or search “COVID-19 testing near me” for up-to-date results.
Some highlights from our COVID-19 work:
Building Lab Capacity and Investing in New Research
Our goal was to provide people with knowledge of their health status as quickly as possible so they can make decisions to protect themselves and their communities. To provide rapid COVID-19 test results to patients from sites across 40 states, we scaled our lab capacity. We built three Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)-certified labs in San Dimas, California, Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C.
We also invested in next-generation sequencing technologies from our lab in Monrovia, California. Our genome sequencing lab focused on identifying COVID-19 variants and played a crucial role in reporting data to public health departments. With this data, experts made recommendations based on the course of the pandemic, helping to bring us to where we are today.
Meeting People Where They Are: The Creation of Kiosks
One of our earliest innovations was born out of necessity. In our partnership with the City of Seattle, due to the city’s landscape and limited space available for normalized drive-thru operations, we were challenged to develop an option for walkable convenient access to testing for the city population. Our CEO, Fred Turner, asked: “What about kiosks?” The team turned to the whiteboards to envision what a kiosk for COVID testing would look like. How would we keep healthcare workers safe? How do we convey instructions? This led to a collaboration with design studio GEHL and the prototype for our mobile kiosks. These kiosks launched in sites across the United States, encouraging accessible and user-friendly testing. Watch the video on the creation of our kiosks here.
Taking Testing on the Road: Deploying Mobile Vans
After witnessing our kiosks’ success, we wondered: are rural and hard-to-reach locations across the United States getting adequate resources to curb the pandemic? How do we reach populations that would otherwise not get tested? According to Pew Trust, an estimated 2 million people 65 and older are mostly or entirely homebound, and another 5 million have health conditions that make it hard to get out. Aligned with our commitment to health equity, we knew we had to find a solution.
Inspired by blood drives, we connected to a camper van fabricator in Los Angeles and the team got to work. We outlined our priorities and walked through our ideal end-to-end user experience. Our final product successfully allowed us to bring COVID-19 testing to over 3,000 sites across the United States, prioritizing remote and underserved regions.
Watch a video about our mobile vans/kiosks here.
Hope Arises: Vaccine Distribution
Our early work was defined by rapid learning, late nights, and sheer determination. Witnessing the impact this pandemic has had on our country’s physical, emotional, and financial well-being, we’ve maintained that momentum as we bring this pandemic to a close. Once vaccines were approved, we utilized our local and national partnerships to build upon our testing infrastructure to begin mass vaccination efforts.
We targeted our vaccine distribution to the populations most impacted by the pandemic, and through partnering with local leaders, worked to build vaccine confidence. In Los Angeles’ Crenshaw neighborhood, we worked with the West Angeles Church to open a recurring vaccination site on Sundays. By partnering with institutions of trust in the community, like churches, we helped build confidence and preparedness in populations traditionally underserved by healthcare.
In Marin County, we worked with county officials to bring vaccinations to Northern California’s West Marin, which is home to many Spanish-speaking agricultural workers who would otherwise have to drive long distances to receive services. We set up vaccine sites with local clinics, non-profits, and community organizations and built relationships that made Curative a trusted member of the communities we serve.
We believe that community health and individual health are intertwined. We aim to continue this community-based and whole-health approach in our future health care work.
The Next Chapter
After tackling the biggest pandemic of our generation, we wanted to address larger, systemic problems in our healthcare system. Providing COVID-19 resources in a time of crisis highlighted many longstanding issues in health care that prevented patients from seeking and receiving services. One of the greatest barriers to care was health insurance, specifically fears around the cost of services. Our motto is “building a healthier tomorrow, together,” — so we set out to create an insurance product that actually inspires people to be healthy.
We’ve launched a new cost-transparent, employer-sponsored health insurance plan with $0 copays and $0 deductibles for all in-network services and preferred prescriptions upon completion of a Baseline Visit within 120 days of enrollment. Our plan encourages people to use the benefits available to them to invest in whole-person and preventive health care. With an initial launch in Texas and future national expansion, Curative supports health and well-being through every step of the member's journey. To learn more about our new health insurance plan, please visit curative.com/healthplan.
Thank you again for your trust and support. We hope to serve you again as your insurance provider in the future.