According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly half of all Americans (49 percent) are on an employer-sponsored healthcare plan. This statistic proves what just about every worker already knows: Health coverage is table stakes when it comes to a company’s benefits package. That said, not all health plans offer equal coverage, and unfortunately, many people don’t realize this until long after their offer letter has been signed. For many, simply understanding what benefits they are entitled to and accessing them is a major challenge.
This is where companies like Accolade step in. Companies work with Accolade to ensure their employees are able to use their health benefits to the fullest. The company’s support team helps employees both understand their health benefits and access primary and mental health care services.
This human-centric approach is augmented by artificial intelligence. Health data, including an employee’s medical history, is fed into Accolade’s “True Health Engine,” which analyzes and provides personalized insight into how to avoid developing a chronic health condition or how to manage an existing one.
In Accolade’s view, employee healthcare is broken, and the fix for it is a combination of AI and the human touch. If the company can realize its lofty goals then it has the potential to impact the lives of tens of millions of Americans. If that sounds like something you’re interested in, we have good news: Accolade is hiring. Continue reading to learn more about the company’s growth in 2021, its approach to code reviews and how it supports employees in running with their good ideas.
A Year of Acquisitions: 2021 has been a year of growth for Accolade. In January it acquired Houston-based 2nd.MD in a deal worth $460 million. 2nd.MD partners with companies to connect their employees with medical experts who provide second opinions on medical diagnoses that require high-cost treatments or surgeries. The consultations are held over the phone or on video chat within three to five days of a request, which 2nd.MD says beats the industry average of “several weeks.”
Fast forward a few months to April and Accolade announced it was acquiring Plushcare, a San Francisco-based provider of virtual primary and mental health care, in a deal valued at up to $450 million. The acquisition enables Accolade to offer health services itself, in addition to working with companies to help their employees more easily access care.
Remembering Code Comes From Humans: Accolade currently has 13 open roles on its engineering team, and all of those require devs to be comfortable getting and giving feedback on their code. In an interview in early 2020, Ben Horst, director of software engineering, told Built In that all code is checked by two devs before it’s committed to Accolade’s test environment.
Horst said his team tries to keep opinions out of code reviews as much as possible, but that doesn’t mean they are completely devoid of humanity. In fact, the opposite is actually true.
“As an author, put yourself in the reviewer’s shoes,” Horst said. “What do you want to see in a code review description? What context do you need? Make sure to write those details out for reviewers. If something isn’t self-explanatory, consider making some comments.
“As a reviewer, put yourself in the author’s shoes. Try to understand what constraints they’re under to get this code into the product. Think about how you’d want to hear the feedback you’re giving. Choose the battles that will yield the most value for the product and forget the rest.”
Bring Good Ideas to Life: Many technology companies encourage their employees to share and pursue new ideas for process improvements or features. What this sometimes looks like in practice is an idea being signed off on that a person then has to pursue alone — on top of their normal workload.
Accolade does things a bit differently and has created a “bold ideas” team to support new initiatives and that owns the company’s “innovation loop” roadmap. The company also runs designathons and hackathons that give team members the ability to quickly take their ideas from concept to reality.
