Some of the most important work in healthcare happens between appointments: checking whether someone filled a prescription, helping them book a screening, or making sure they understand how to renew their coverage.
Those tasks are easy to miss when care teams are stretched. For patients, the consequences can be another delayed appointment or a gap in coverage.
Grapefruit Health is building a workforce around that need. The company hires nursing, pharmacy, and social work students as remote Patient Champions, giving them paid experience supporting real patients while they are still in school.
Founder and CEO Eric Alvarez spoke with Nurse.org about how the model works. Grapefruit partners with health plans, provider groups, laboratories, and health systems to design outreach programs around specific goals, such as closing care gaps or helping members stay enrolled. Its platform matches students to patients and manages the outreach, with language, culture, and community helping inform those matches.
For students, the work is a chance to practice listening, explain health information in plain language, understand barriers to care, and document patient conversations. They also learn how the wider healthcare system works, including the connection between patient needs and health-plan priorities.
For healthcare organizations, it adds capacity for work that otherwise competes with the demands of hands-on care. That combination is what makes the model compelling: students develop skills they will carry into their careers while helping patients take the next step in their care today.
Proud to back Eric and the Grapefruit Health team.
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