Nat Turner on Flatiron Health's Emphasis on Community Oncologists

Flatiron Health focuses on helping community oncologists because they still care for the majority of patients with cancer and make it possible for patients to get care without traveling long distances, explained Nat Turner, co-founder and CEO of Flatiron Health.

Transcript (slightly modified)

Why does Flatiron Health largely focus on community oncologists?

Community oncology, for us, is critical because that’s where most of the patients are treated with cancer, so somewhere probably around 60% today—used to be 85%, but it’s probably going back to 85%—of cancer patients that are treated in community. Also, patients are generally elderly with cancer, meaning it’s harder to travel, they need to be closer to caregivers and the only true scalable solution is a close-to-home option, which community oncology can provide.

It’s not very scalable to have a hospital in every single small town in America, you really need a more distributed network and we also think it’s the best way to take care of patients, to build closer relationships with the patients, the physicians do the care teams, it’s a lot less complicated of an environment to navigate as a patient, and it’s just a lot more kind of closer touch.