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Invest in technical skills and relationships
Technical skills
Curative's engineers deploy agents with Claude Code or Codex, and they are not writing code anymore, or even reading it. One senior engineer is far more productive than a year ago, so the company is investing in having those people.
Relationships
On the relationship side, a member wants to be able to call and talk to a person. Members love talking to the AI, and a person still has to be somewhere in the loop. Provider groups get a chunk of their revenue from Curative, and larger groups need a person maintaining that relationship. Sales go through brokers, who want a finalist presentation, dinner, and golf, and that relationship is if anything more powerful. Most employer contracts are at least a million dollars, and the bigger the contract, the more it matters to have trust in the room.
Care navigators
Every member also gets a care navigator who stays with them for their entire journey, and that headcount grows linearly with membership. Navigators now use agents to follow up, so they don't have to remember to reach out to a diabetic member every week and can manage at population scale. Curative has about 650 people and expects to drop to around 400 in the short term, with more back-office workflows still to move to agents.
Where did the care navigator role come from?
Patient navigation began in 1990 with Harold Freeman, a surgeon at Harlem Hospital in New York. His program aimed to help women get through breast cancer screening and treatment. Navigators guide patients through appointments, paperwork, and referrals. The model has since spread across cancer care and primary care.
Why do employers use insurance brokers?
Employers buying group coverage often hire a broker to collect bids from several insurers and compare them. Brokers are typically paid through commissions from the insurer or through fees from the employer. A broker knows each carrier's pricing and service record. Because the broker shapes which bids reach the employer, insurers invest in those relationships.
How do agents help a care team follow up?
Chronic conditions such as diabetes involve regular checks, refills, and follow-ups. An agent can track each member's schedule and prompt outreach when one is due. A navigator then reviews the cases and makes the calls that need a human voice. This lets one person oversee more members than a manual list could.
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