Robert Baird, RN, MSA, on Direct Contracting for Smaller Employers

Robert Baird, RN, MSA, president of the National Cancer Treatment Alliance, discusses ways that employers of all sizes can pursue direct contracting with health care providers.

Transcript

Can employers pursue direct contracting arrangements even if they are not large? If so, how?

There are many different ways that employers can pursue a direct contracting strategy. You don't have to be a large employer. In fact, the self-insured and companies that are able to do direct contracting are becoming much smaller and have less employees. It used to be that you would have to have a few thousand employees, but the market has changed and there doesn't have to be one size fits all. I know employers can band together through chambers of commerce and other types of organizations that help them pull together. There's also the ability to contract with a national organization such as the National Cancer Treatment Alliance, and we can contract in areas where it's nationally, regionally, or locally.