How Curative Connects and Supports its Mission-Driven Team
Curative is on a mission to make a positive impact on the American healthcare system. Founded in 2020, Curative became one of the largest providers of COVID-19 diagnostics tests; however, that work revealed confusion around patient cost sharing and individual obligations as a glaring obstacle to positive health outcomes.
This revelation led the Curative team on a new mission to re-engineer employer-based healthcare, by combining simplicity, engagement, and cost transparency with a competitive monthly premium and zero additional costs for members*.
Changing healthcare for the better is a monumental effort, requiring a highly-motivated team studded with diverse talents, knowledge, and expertise—and crucially—a way to focus and align it.
We met up with Curative’s Marketing Manager, Joan Phan, and David Krawitz, Senior Director of Corporate Communications, to learn what it takes to keep a fast-moving organization informed and engaged through times of rapid growth and change.
Asked what drew her to join the Curative team, and what keeps her excited about her future there, Phan was quick to answer. “I was initially impressed with Curative’s mission-driven culture. We’re working to make a positive change in healthcare. I see that with everyone I work with. Being able to make a tangible impact through our work pulls us all together,” she said.
Krawitz also pointed out the spirit of thoughtful innovation that permeates the organization.
“After working my whole career to try to reform a severely broken system, I was attracted to this startup doing truly innovative work. Our audacious goal is to fix a healthcare industry that isn’t really serving the needs of most Americans.”
"Being able to make a tangible impact through our work pulls us all together"
That dedication to innovation and meaningful impact is critical to the Curative team’s mission, and its unique approach to solving long-standing industry challenges.
“There have been many attempts at innovation in the healthcare industry, and most failed,” Krawitz explained. “The main reason is that the power to create sustained and broad-based change relies on the payors. If it’s not paid for, it’s not going to happen for very long, or for very many people. That’s why we decided to take on the role of payor. It was the best way to influence the system.”
Krawitz then outlined some fundamental areas where an organization like Curative can leverage its position as a payor to affect real change.
“The current system, as it’s designed, is not a healthcare system; it’s a disease care system. We wanted to turn that on its head and focus on keeping people healthy.
Preventative care doesn’t fully capture what we’re doing. We’re trying to understand individual health journeys and provide them with the tools and resources they need to prevent illnesses in the future, or current illnesses from progressing. In doing so, we anticipate cost savings that would be spent on serious illnesses that are preventable, or avoidable.”
Curative’s success factors in delivering positive health outcomes to its members are manifold, but Krawitz outlined three that provide a strong foundation for better care.
1. Affordability: We reduce costs so members have no reason to avoid seeking care. After completing a Baseline Visit within 120 days of their plan effective date, Curative members benefit from comprehensive in-network coverage with no copays, deductibles, or out-of-pocket expenses—all for a single monthly premium.
2. Simplicity: We simplify healthcare by eliminating copays and deductibles for in-network care and creating straightforward, modern experiences to make care management virtually stress-free.
3. Engagement: We build personal connections with our members. Each member is assigned a Care Navigator who provides guidance for any health concerns, ensuring tailored support for their health and wellness goals.
Although both headcount and operational complexity have grown dramatically since its founding, Curative has been able to maintain an award-winning workplace culture.
In addition to its mission-driven focus on impact, Phan highlighted a unique energy that keeps work at Curative exciting and engaging. “We’re very adaptable, and we make it a point to work quickly when there’s an issue to resolve,” she began. That bias toward action and moving quickly is bolstered by a strong emphasis on psychological safety among colleagues.
“Everyone’s engaged in sharing new ideas, without focusing as much on whether they’re good or bad,” Phan continued. “You can see that openness toward new ideas reflected in our healthcare plans, where we’re introducing programs that haven’t been seen before, and are producing really positive outcomes for members. The team has a shared sense of purpose, and that leads to a truly motivating culture. Our leadership team shows trust in our ability to work toward creative solutions as a collective.”
Krawitz agreed, adding, “While everyone has their distinct roles and responsibilities, there really are no boundaries as to how someone can contribute. People regularly share ideas outside of their area of focus, in order to help push the organization forward.
As a result of that, we’re able to experiment with a lot of unorthodox ideas that lead to innovation,” he explained, “Our CEO says ‘if it doesn’t work, we’ll stop doing it; if it works, we’ll do more of it.’ That might sound obvious, but it’s a concept that a lot of other companies fail to grasp, and as a result, they fail to innovate.”
While creativity and an openness to new ideas are both essential to successful innovation, it’s equally important to have a strong foundation of data and knowledge to guide decision-making.
As the Curative team continued to grow, it became evident that the tools they used to communicate and share knowledge would need to evolve as well. This sparked a search for a tool that could consolidate communications, connect colleagues, and provide a single source of truth for organizational knowledge, all while staying true to the value of simplicity that led to so many positive outcomes for Curative members.
“Our channels weren’t well integrated,” Phan recalled. “Information was scattered across separate mediums. Wherever you received a particular communication, it would just continue to live there.
We needed to transition internal communications to become the starting point for information, rather than just another endpoint.“
As a data-driven organization, finding a tool that could deliver on those goals, but also provide objective measures of progress was paramount.
“When we were evaluating new vendors, real-time analytics was also a key factor,” Phan said. “Our previous intranet was a dead zone. Nobody was going in there, and we weren’t getting any value out of it. When people actually did engage, we didn’t have the benefit of analytics to help us understand what they were engaging with.”
"Our previous intranet was a dead zone."
In 2023, the team’s search and evaluation process ultimately led them to choose Haystack as their new platform. With the organization-wide implementation behind them, Phan and Krawitz were able to share some thoughts on their own experience, and that of their colleagues.
“The reaction has been positive across the board. It’s been a smooth transition,” Phan shared.
Haystack provided the core capabilities Krawitz and Phan were looking for, while keeping change management overhead to a minimum by connecting and consolidating many of the tools and processes they already used.
“The platform integrations were key,” Krawitz said. “Haystack works seamlessly with multiple systems we rely on. Our old platform wasn’t designed in a way that was appropriate for our goals, but Haystack is.”
While the native integrations reduced the complexity of the team’s implementation process, they also made onboarding and day-to-day engagement simpler and more flexible for end users.
“It was important for us to deliver information without disrupting anyone’s day-to-day operations,” Phan added. “Whatever it is that you’re used to, we wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t be a big change. For people who like to receive their information through Slack, we have an integration in Haystack that automatically delivers it there.
A new platform can require a lot of time, effort, and resources to get everyone onboarded. With Haystack we were able to hit the ground running. People got it pretty much immediately.”
In addition to their smooth rollout, Phan noted that communication and knowledge sharing became more efficient across the board.
“Haystack really streamlines things for us by bringing everything into one place,” she explained. “That equates to less work for me as an admin, but also for everyone else. It removed a lot of the confusion people had. There’s no longer any question about where to find important information.”
“The platform integrations were key."
As an organization operating in the closely-regulated healthcare industry, it’s essential for Curative’s employee community to have easy, timely access to information they can trust, and also for leadership to ensure they’re engaging with it.
“With Haystack, I’m able to see the granular data around what resources are being used most often, and which posts are getting the most views,” Phan shared. “But what I enjoy the most is being able to know who is actually receiving and opening important updates, and being able to re-engage people who haven’t. We never had that capability before.”
“Previously, we were dependent on email. Reaching people was kind of a shot in the dark. We’ve been able to incorporate our intranet into our communications strategy, rather than having it exist as another separate endpoint.”
Phan and Krawitz continue to unlock new opportunities for leveling up the digital employee experience as their journey continues.
“We implemented Haystack about six months ago,” Krawitz said. “Joan and I are still finding new ways to use the platform to engage people—not just with the content we’re sharing, but with one another.“
In addition to streamlining communication channels and knowledge sharing, the team has been exploring new ways to use Haystack to foster engagement of all types.
“We’re also using Haystack to encourage more employee recognition,” Phan offered. “I like how we’re able to associate our organizational values with the recognition we give. Haystack continues to be a critical tool for accomplishing that.”
“I also love groups. It’s been really nice to be able to create unique homes for individual teams and departments,” she added. Krawitz agreed, noting, “As we continue we’re looking forward to creating more space for affinity groups and other ways to support our community.”
As a team that successfully led a successful intranet and established an outstanding digital employee experience, we asked Phan and Krawitz to share a few pieces of advice:
We’re thrilled to get to work with organizations leading their industry forward toward positive change. It’s our goal to continue delivering new tools, and innovating in ways that empower teams like Curative to deliver a digital employee experience that evolves and improves every day.
*Every Curative member can qualify for the $0 deductible or copay for in-network care and preferred prescriptions. Just complete a Baseline Visit in your first 120 days of plan effective date. See curative.com to learn more. Curative Insurance Company PPO.
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