Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber Technologies, speaks during an Economic Club of Washington event in Washington, DC, June 11, 2019.

Uber is moving more deeply into the health sector, and that means striking deals so employers and health plans will cover the cost of a trip to a doctor's office.

The ride-hailing company announced Wednesday it is working with Grand Rounds, a venture-backed health-tech start-up that works with employers to provide guidance on employees' medical needs. That includes things like finding the right doctor or getting a second opinion for a complex diagnosis.

Uber's health-care efforts to date have primarily involved nonemergency medical transportation, which is a $3 billion market, and fit into the larger medical transport market, which some researchers say will be worth $42 billion by 2024.

Uber and rival Lyft see an opportunity here because some 3.6 million Americans miss their health-care appointments each year due to a lack of reliable transportation. Uber and Lyft have focused on selling to Medicare and Medicaid, as well as other insurers, to help those who can't afford a ride or can no longer drive.

For Uber, working with Grand Rounds is an opportunity to move into a new and potentially lucrative market: large companies that are self-insured.

Increasingly, companies are willing to pay for their workers to seek medical care, especially if it means they can avoid costlier health expenses down the line. As part of this many, employers are starting to experiment with ways to steer their employees to higher-quality and lower-cost physicians. Providing free rides could prove to be incentive enough for a worker to make the shift.

Grand Rounds' largest customers include Comcast (which owns CNBC's parent company NBCUniversal), Walmart and News Corp, all of which are self-insured.