Robert Baird on the Benefits of Direct Contracting for Employers

Robert Baird, RN, MSA, president of the National Cancer Treatment Alliance, discusses potential protections self-insured employers could seeing from direct contracting, including the elimination of tactics from pharmacy benefit managers that can affect patient outcomes.

Transcript

What should employers know about direct contracting in cancer care?

[They should know] that they do have an opportunity, and they do have an opportunity to take more control of their own health care costs and their health care benefits in relation to cancer. And this will allow them to eliminate a lot of the burden of some tactics by pharmacy benefit managers and insurance companies, such as preauthorization, precertification, white bagging, or brown bagging, that can cause harm to patients and also interfere with the doctor-patient relationships. And our goal is to connect them with community oncology practices, where employees live and work.