This Company Pays Nursing Students to Work With Real Patients Remotely

Most nursing students graduate with plenty of clinical hours but few chances to earn money while they are in school. Grapefruit Health, a Chicago-based healthcare workforce company, wants to change that by putting nursing students to work clinically before they ever get a license.

The best part? The work is real, clinical work to further their nursing careers—and it can all be done remotely. Nurse.org connected with Eric Alvarez, Founder and CEO of Grapefruit Health, about what the work looks like, what students gain from it, and why he believes human connection still matters most in healthcare.

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Grapefruit Health is a healthcare workforce company that puts nursing students to work doing real patient outreach, all while they are still in nursing school or newly graduated. Students are hired as remote “Patient Champions” who can perform important remote clinical tasks for patients, such as: 

• Check in on medication regimens and adherence
• Assess and update insurance coverage status
• Complete discharge follow-up
• Enroll patients in eligible programs, such as diabetes education or screening
• Connect with additional care and resources 
• Remind patients about overdue preventive screenings and help them schedule
• Help Medicaid members understand and complete their coverage renewal
• Encourage patients to return at-home test kits

• Conduct surveys such as CHNAs, SDOH, satisfaction, and CAHPS

The company also aims to match student Patient Champions to real patients by language, culture, and community, so the person on the phone is ideally someone the patient can trust. 

“Every call is a real conversation with a real patient, often someone who’s fallen through the cracks,” Alvarez says.

One of the major strengths of Grapefruit Health, Alvarez points out, is that students gain critical real-world patient experience, and the organizations on the other end of the phone get assistance with vital tasks that are often overlooked in the chaos of providing hands-on care.

The company partners directly with organizations like health plans, provider groups, labs, and health systems. “We design each outreach program with the client around a specific goal, like closing a care gap or keeping members enrolled. Clients don’t post individual tasks,” Alvarez explains. The platform then matches Patient Champions to the right patients and manages the outreach.

“We’ve worked with many organizations including some of the largest health plans and health systems,” he notes. 

Overall, Grapefruit Health can provide benefits for both sides: Providers and facilities get better engagement and outcomes, and students get paid, flexible, resume-building experience talking with real patients before they graduate.

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Aside from addressing critical gaps in healthcare, Grapefruit Health can also help build better nurses for the future. According to Alvarez, students build skills that they may not get to practice in a classroom, including:

• Therapeutic communication and active listening
• Motivational interviewing and addressing barriers to care
• Health literacy, or translating clinical information into everyday language
• Cultural humility and working across language and background
• Documentation and working inside a HIPAA-compliant workflow
• Understanding how health plans, quality measures, and care gaps actually work

That last one is a perspective Alvarez says most clinicians never learn in school. Students also get a look at the business side of healthcare, such as why a missed mammogram or an unfilled prescription matters to a health plan. He says that makes them better advocates for their patients wherever they work.

“Students graduate with something most of their classmates don’t have: thousands of real patient engagements,” Alvarez notes. He explains that students learn to build rapport quickly, handle hesitation or frustration, explain health information in plain language, practice motivational interviewing, and document accurately. In his words, that shows up “in clinical rotations, in job interviews, and on day one of their first job.”

The work is also paid, remote, and flexible, which can be helpful for students juggling class, clinicals, and life.

Mary Battaglia, CMA (AAMA), RCS (CCI), a Patient Outreach Specialist / Patient Champion Clinical from Tobyhanna, PA, came to Grapefruit Health from a different clinical background than most Patient Champions. A long-time healthcare professional with over 15 years of clinical experience, she returned to school as a non-traditional student to expand into technology and is now pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance.

Battaglia tells Nurse.org that she discovered Grapefruit through her college and was immediately drawn both to their mission and the remote work opportunity, as she is a full-time student also balancing work. 

As a Patient Champion, Battaglia works on member outreach and virtual patient assessments across a variety of preventive care initiatives, ranging from checking on A1C and IFOBT colorectal cancer screening kits to guiding patients through the Podimetrics SmartMat program. 

She performs tasks such as calling patients to complete structured care plan assessments, answering their questions, and encouraging them to stay proactive about their health to avoid preventable complications.

“The work is project-based and incredibly flexible, which makes it ideal to balance alongside a full-time school schedule,” she explains. 

Battaglia did not share her average pay, but explained that the pay structure is performance-based, with Patient Champions paid per call completed with additional incentive opportunities. Overall, she says she finds the work with Grapefruit very fulfilling. 

“What makes the daily work so special are the patients themselves,” she says. “Countless times, a patient will say, ‘Thank you so much for calling to check on me.’ Being able to brighten someone’s day, help them take control of their health, and connect with people across the country through technology is both deeply rewarding and humbling.”

After graduating from nursing school, not all nurses will continue with remote clinical work, but Alvarez says the skills still carry over. Nurses spend a huge share of their day educating, reassuring, and motivating patients, he adds, and a lot of that happens by phone through discharge follow-ups, triage calls, and care coordination.

“The remote part is just the delivery method,” he says. “The core skill is talking with patients, and that applies at the bedside, in a clinic, or anywhere else.”

The first step is to visit the Grapefruit Health website and apply. Nursing students make up the majority of Patient Champions, but pharmacy and social work students can also work with the platform. If you’re bilingual, you have a huge advantage, since Grapefruit Health works hard to connect patients to Champions who speak their language.

According to the job listing, compensation ranges, but Champions are paid per call attempt and by successful call completion.  The position is 1099, and no hourly rate is guaranteed. Champions must commit to being available at minimum, six hours per week. 

Pay is structured as follows:

• $0.50 per call attempt
• $2.00 – $6.00 per successful call assessment

Because pay is tied to call completion, actual earnings vary significantly based on how many patients a Champion is able to reach and successfully assess in a given shift.

After being hired, students then complete training and onboarding, including practice conversations in The Grove, the company’s AI-powered simulation platform where students talk with realistic AI patients.

And while AI is certainly a part of Grapefruit Health, Alvarez stresses that the human component is a vital piece of their business model. In his mind, getting a real human on the phone is the key. 

“We believe human connection is still the most powerful tool in healthcare,” he says. “A patient who’s scared, confused, or skeptical wants to talk to a real person who gets them.”

Alvarez adds that when it comes to choosing who that real person is, nursing students are the clear choice. Nursing students, he says, are some of the most empathetic and motivated people in healthcare. “They’re ready to make a difference before they graduate,” he says. “We just give them the platform.”

🤔 Nursing students: What do you think of this job? Will you be applying? Tell us why or why not in the comments below.