How the CEO at Curative Accelerates Growth by Meeting Consumers’ Needs

Growth is rarely easy – specifically, growth driven Growth is rarely easy – specifically, growth driven by customer interest and market demand rather than the temporary variety driven by acquisition, cost takeout or organizational restructuring.

Because markets are moving faster than ever, we believe sustainable growth results from:

• Unlocking compelling customer insights to inform growth strategies
• Creating relevant, impactful growth moves
• Executing faster and more efficiently

Through this series of interviews with healthcare leaders, we explore the driving insights, key actions and anticipated impact of their recent growth strategies.

In this edition, we sit down with Fred Turner, chief executive officer and co-founder of Curative, to learn more about his unique vision and approach to driving change in the insurance industry.

Curative is a groundbreaking healthcare services company that created and launched the first-of-its-kind employer-based health insurance plan. Founded in 2020, Curative reengineered health insurance by providing unmatched simplicity, enhanced engagement and cost transparency with a competitive monthly premium and zero additional costs. Curative is all about building the next generation of large employer health insurance – focused on preventative health and removing barriers to care.

Fred Turner is the CEO and co-founder of Curative. Under his leadership, Curative has shifted from the leading COVID-19 testing provider to an innovator in health insurance, offering plans with no copays, no deductibles and no cost-sharing for in-network care (with the completion of a baseline visit). This model has achieved a 94% member engagement rate, far surpassing industry standards. Turner’s vision is to create a healthcare system that supports holistic patient health.

What Is the Major Unlock That Informed Your Approach and Strategy for Curative?

When Curative was founded in January 2020, we initially focused on improving sepsis outcomes but quickly pivoted to supporting COVID diagnostic testing. That work exposed us to two key learnings: one, we touched every type of payer and health plan and saw cracks in the system, and two, we learned that consumers have serious fear and anxiety when it comes to healthcare expenses. That fear may prevent them from getting care, for example a COVID test, even when COVID tests are fully covered. We knew we wanted to do something that would move the needle on U.S. healthcare, something that could drive meaningful change in the system.

“Our experience during COVID made us say, the payer dynamic is a real problem with the U.S. healthcare system, and we could build a payer that can drive preventative care and better long-term outcomes.”

We saw the untapped space, where there hasn’t been innovation for decades, as the employer market, which is where 50% of Americans get their health insurance. The U.S. has run a natural experiment over the past 10 to 15 years with High Deductible Health Plans. Fifteen years ago, about 10% of plans met the American Care Act (ACA) definition of high deductible. Today, we’re closer to 60%. Did it work? The answer is a resounding no. Consumers aren’t great at price shopping, and people don’t make rational decisions, particularly when it comes to emotional subjects such as health and their finances.

“The other substantial effect when patient cost sharing goes up is the deferral of care.”

The National Bureau of Economic Research ran a study that followed a group who moved from a low deductible to a high deductible plan over three years. In the first year, you see about a 12% reduction in spending, which looks great – like we reduced healthcare spend. The problem is when you dig into what is happening, you see people putting off primary care visits, checkups and screening tests – even though in the plan design, certain preventative screening tests, like colonoscopies, were covered at $0 out-of-pocket cost. The care that gets put off is lower acuity preventative care.

“If you have a heart attack, you’re still going to go to the hospital, no matter what your deductible is. What the high deductible plan does do is prevent you from getting the checkup that might have avoided that hospitalization.”

How Did That Insight Help You to Create the Curative Platform in a Relevant, Differentiated Way?

We’re trying to approach preventative care differently in terms of the value that we assigned to it. The typical way that an insurance plan looks at loss, or medical loss right now, is every dollar spent as $1. Whether you spend $1 on preventive care or you spend $1 in the hospital, it’s still just $1. The way that we look at it is that dollar spent on a preventative visit could avoid inpatient stays, emergency room visits or specialty drug use.

“Preventative care that keeps people well is a dollar significantly better spent than a dollar on a preventable hospital stay.”

We’re committed to making an investment upfront, to getting people engaged in their care early and then seeing that payoff downstream with lower ER, hospital or specialty drug use. Most employers get stuck in this cycle of deferred care, where the population’s health is decreasing and costs continue to go up. Curative flips the script. We make it easy for people to engage upfront. The cost sharing is zero, so there are zero out-of-pocket costs, no copays and no deductibles to go and access care – as long as you engage in a preventative health visit within the first 120 days of signing up for the plan.

“If you want people to engage with care, you have to make it really simple.”

And the only way to make it simple enough that people really understand the cost to them is to make it zeros across the board. That’s the fear that any engagement in care is bad because I might get a bill for it – that’s what we have to fight. We think the only way to reset people to see a doctor if they’re sick or in a preventive manner to avoid becoming sick is to build trust that those actions won’t cost them a dime. Our philosophy, the long game, is that we will have a higher spend in the first year because people will get the care that they need. But in the second year, we’ll get back to baseline and, by the third year, we’ll actually be saving money because this population will be healthier.

How Are You Proving That Curative Can Execute Results That Employers Are Looking For?

We’re still in the process of building trust with members and employers, but the engagement piece via a preventative visit is key. We get an hour of the member’s time to do two things: one, we aim to educate them about accessing their care through a Care Navigator session. How do they make appointments? What is a deductible? What’s a copay? How do you figure out what doctors are in-network? When should you go to the ER?

“We’re demonstrating that we want them to access the care they need versus an adversarial relationship that members often have with their health plan that doesn’t want to cover what they need.”

That kicks off the relationship in a fundamentally different way and drives a higher degree of engagement. Two, members then meet with a clinician who is looking for gaps in care. If we see a pre-diabetic patient, we want to get them to a primary care physician who’s going to manage their pre-diabetes or even reverse it, rather than letting that continue to full-on type two diabetes, where, if unmanaged, could lead to major health complications that result in tremendous expense – that’s bad for the member and for the health plan. In the longer term, we expect to be able to keep rates closer to flat by managing this care over time, rather than the typical 10% increases you’re going to get from BUCA carrier every year. We’re new to the space and want to make sure that we’re here for the long term.

“It may sometimes seem like moving the boulder of the American healthcare system is impossible, but I think with a lot of dedicated, smart people chipping away at it, piece by piece, we really can make substantial change.”