This will be my 100th post since emerging from radio silence on April 5, 2019. I have always used my blog as the means to sharpen my own thinking, communicate my perspective, and educate the market on how I believe healthcare should be. I also write a monthly newsletter to the company, which we call the Surf Report, which helps me do the same within the company. I thought for my 100th post I would share where we plan to continue to innovate as a company – enjoy!
At Crossover’s company-wide (and virtual) Bamboleo this past December, we teased the idea of a “Fourth Pivot.” The business “pivot” is a concept popularized by thinkers such as Eric Reiss and Steve Blank, where any combination of market conditions, technological innovations, customer feedback, or expanding capabilities allows (and often forces) a company to shift, or pivot, its strategy.
A pivot is often seen from the outside as tacit recognition that the company’s direction was not fruitful and needed a reboot. This is not always, or even usually, the case. For most companies, a pivot marks a point in time when there is a palpable shift in how they approach their customers, their clients, and the market. But it’s not so much a shift in vision, or a fix to something that is wrong; often, it is just a recognition that something IS right. It’s the “push all the chips in” moment when you are finally onto something. It comes after all the acrobatics, the frequent flexing, and constantly staying nimble—when we finally stiffen up and totally commit with ferocity. And now, this moment has arrived for us at Crossover in February 2021.
Right from our inception in 2010, we were committed to not only disrupting the conventional model of healthcare delivery and experience, but also to helping people build a different and positive relationship with healthcare and with their own health. As we said at the time, we wanted to inspire them to live their healthiest life possible (which means different things to different people), but we had to arrive at this richly-imagined future through a series of pivots enabled by new skills, a growing customer and member base, an increasingly multivalent team, and incredible technologies that could only be imagined a decade ago.
In 2011, Crossover underwent our First Pivot by moving from a retail, direct-to-consumer offering to an employer-focused, onsite, health center-based service. A few years later in 2015, our Second Pivot saw us transition into a nearsite health provider, where we could help more and smaller employers enjoy the same benefits that our clients with onsite centers did, but at our local, shared centers instead. These two pivots allowed us to improve our members’ experience as well as their access to care. Then, in early 2019, we embarked on the journey to move beyond our physical centers. The transition to virtual-first, combined with our population health efforts, allows us to provide care for our clients’ entire population and shows how we can improve employees’ health—regardless of care channel, health condition, or geographic location. This Third Pivot moved us beyond just member experience and access, and into true population health management. The pandemic has shown how clinically and financially resilient our model is. Clinically, our care teams were able to move seamlessly to providing care through the new virtual channel (our care teams were just amazing), our clients responded very positively to our flexibility in offering new services in new ways (testing, passport, and health monitoring), and our members loved the care (our NPS scores actually increased!).
Which brings us to this moment in time. Our Fourth Pivot is a shift to becoming a true health and wellness lifestyle company. A lifestyle brand is something people love to be associated with because of what it represents, how it makes them feel, and what it inspires them to be (think Nike, Peloton, Lululemon, etc.). With all of our new capabilities, we are finally in a position to provide not just a “clinic without walls” but also a new and valuable health “membership.” We’re moving from simply treating sickness to helping our members address the behaviors and conditions that will not only improve but sustain their health—and ultimately help them live their best lives. It is through these efforts that we are able to demonstrate the full value of being a Crossover member. Crossover is not only “healthcare as it should be,” the healthcare we want for our own families, it is also health as a lifestyle: surround sound and streaming, proactive rather than reactive, and all about engagement and accountability that starts early, stays connected, and is not only available whenever or wherever needed, it is something desired where members are actually proud to belong.
This transition to lifestyle membership will be steady as we expand our population health approach and ensure that we have the right engagement tools and techniques. We are already starting to introduce new fitness and health education classes that add incredible value to a Crossover membership. We are moving beyond members seeing us for simple or complex medical problems to now seeking us out for health solutions that allow them to thrive on their own personal wellness journeys. This is how our retail direct-to-consumer pilot that we will be testing for the balance of the year ties in. This is why our Passport app—originally introduced as the “Back to Campus” solution for employers—is now flexing to provide remote testing, vaccination documentation, and health notary services.
This transition—our Fourth Pivot—is Crossover completing its evolution from a direct primary care practice in 2010 to a national medical group focused on complete health and wellbeing in 2021 and beyond. It’s the “inevitable” outcome of our original vision.
Apparently, Elon sees it the same way:
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
Scott Shreeve, MD 