Healthcare is full of people working hard to deliver excellent care. Yet providers, employers, and patients still navigate a system that can feel fragmented, complex, and misaligned.
At Sano, we believe better healthcare requires better alignment around what matters most: better outcomes, a better patient experience, and healthier communities. Direct contracting is one way we are putting that belief into practice.
Healthcare Incentives Are Changing.
Employers are looking for new ways to manage the rising cost of healthcare while improving access, quality, and outcomes for their employees. Simply spending more on healthcare is not a sustainable strategy. But lower cost alone is not the goal. The goal is better value: the right care, delivered at the right time, with better outcomes and a better experience.
That is driving more employers to seek closer partnerships with healthcare providers who are willing to be accountable for the care they deliver and the experience patients receive.
What is Direct Contracting?
Direct contracting creates a relationship between an employer and a healthcare provider organization. Rather than relying solely on traditional network arrangements, employers and providers can work together to establish clearer expectations around access, quality, patient experience, and value.
The model can take different forms, but the opportunity is consistent: create stronger alignment between the organizations paying for care, the providers delivering it, and the patients receiving it.
As a physician-owned organization, Sano has the ability to explore new ways of delivering and paying for care. Direct contracting gives us a closer relationship with employers and an opportunity to better understand what patients and organizations need from specialty care. It also creates greater accountability—not just for the care we provide, but for the experience surrounding that care.
Making a Different Model Work
The idea of direct contracting is relatively simple. Making it work is not. Much of healthcare’s existing infrastructure—from contracting and billing to payment processes and relationships between provider groups—was built around traditional fee-for-service care. A bundled arrangement asks organizations to operate differently.
At Sano, that means developing new approaches to how we price care, coordinate across providers and organizations, manage the financial flow of a bundled episode, and measure whether we delivered what we promised. That creates complexity. It also creates an opportunity.
We believe the work required to make these models function is worth doing because the alternative is continuing to accept a system that often separates the way care is delivered from the outcomes and experience we want to achieve.
What This Means for Referring Providers
Direct contracting should strengthen the relationships between specialty care and referring providers. As employers increasingly seek accountable healthcare partnerships, specialty providers will be expected to demonstrate not only clinical expertise, but also quality, access, outcomes, communication, and patient experience. That creates opportunities for stronger collaboration across the continuum of care, including improved patient navigation and support, a shared commitment to delivering value, and clearer expectations around outcomes.
What This Means for Patients
Patients may not always know whether their employer has a direct relationship with a healthcare provider. They may simply notice that getting care feels easier.
When these partnerships work well, patients can experience easier access to appropriate care, seamless coordination, and less administrative burden.
When incentives are better aligned, the healthcare system can become more responsive to what patients actually need.
Looking Ahead
Direct contracting is not the destination, and it is not the answer to every challenge in healthcare. It is one of many strategies that can help move healthcare toward greater value, accountability, and better outcomes. At Sano, we believe providers should be willing to rethink not only how care is delivered, but also how we partner, how we are paid, and how we measure success.
Direct contracting is one way we are putting that belief into practice—building stronger relationships among providers, employers, and patients and continuing our work to transform outpatient healthcare for patients, providers, and communities.
Interested in partnering? Contact us at [email protected].
