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Amazon Care Telehealth solution
Frustrated with soaring medical costs and inadequate healthcare solutions, Amazon chairman and founder Jeff Bezos wanted to find a new healthcare solution that he could offer to Amazon’s large workforce and also to people all over the country. Amazon Care is the company’s bold new venture in this direction offering virtual healthcare services on demand, with dedicated ‘care’ teams of doctors and nurses, including clinician support day and night, weekends and on holidays and in-person, at-home care for tests, labs and treatment. The company also offers contact-free prescription delivery.
Amazon Care www.amazon.care is focused on offering non-emergency care immediately with virtual visits 24/7 and 365 days a year. This includes addressing sickness, fatigue, depression, anxiety and daily cares that may be exacerbated with the Covid-19 pandemic situation. This can be hugely helpful when sudden situations could become problematic such as babies getting sick overnight with high fevers.
Amazon’s Care Team works with Care Medical, an independent medical practice consisting of a dedicated group of licensed doctors, nurse practitioners and registered nurses to help individual health goals. This includes working with familiar faces for ongoing care. All clinicians have experience working with both adults and children, focused on “whole person care.” Questions can be answered right from the app.
Launched yesterday March 17, 2021 to serve other Washington-based companies, Amazon Care has been in operation for 18 months so far for Amazon employees and their families to access high-quality medical care quickly and easily. This service enables video or chat conferences as quickly as 60 seconds or less to medical professionals, eliminating lengthy wait times.
Amazon Care began as an app-based pilot program to Amazon employees in September 2019 and then rolled out to their workforce in Washington by September 2020.
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Amazon Care offers two services:
Virtual Care: Connecting via the Amazon Care app for both Android and iOS for quick immediate medical help with a nurse or doctor using messaging or video
In-person care: Medical professionals come to the patient’s home to provide in-person care from routine blood draws to listening to a patient’s lungs.
The service also offers contactless prescription delivery right to a patient’s door. This summer, Amazon Care will expand to all 50 states to offer virtual care for its employees and to other companies. The service is speedy and effective, eliminating delays. Amazon Care, wellness clinics and pharmacy all work independently.
As a workplace benefit, Amazon Care offers immediate access to a range of urgent and primary care services, including COVID-19 and flu testing, vaccinations, treatment of illnesses and injuries, preventive care, sexual health, prescription requests, refills, and delivery, and additional wellness needs such as nutrition, joint and muscle health evaluations, sleep programs, pre-pregnancy planning and more. As Covid-19 has restricted travel with doctors also limiting access, Amazon Care adjusted in Seattle to offer vaccines in families’ homes.
Amazon Care offers free access to primary care physicians, labs and prescription delivery to all Amazon employees.
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“My 3-year-old daughter woke up at 2 a.m. with a terrible cough, so bad that her breathing sounded restricted. Of course we were worried about COVID-19 and certainly did not want to go to an urgent care center or emergency room if we could avoid it. Using Amazon Care, we were able to connect with a clinician in under a minute who provided medical advice that helped us get through the night. She also prescribed a medication that was delivered to our doorstep by 9 a.m. the next day. Thanks to Amazon Care, we were able to manage her illness without ever having to leave the house.”
Patients can schedule follow up visits with their clinician as needed using the app. Patients receive care summaries and follow-up reminders after visits. When patients have in-person visits, they get estimates of when the clinician will arrive as well to their homes.
Amazon Care offers secure, HIPAA-compliant service so that employees and their families/dependents can visit with the same medical professionals, building long-term relationships and familiar connections. Seeing familiar faces is often important to a patient, but also in terms of care, essential for proper diagnosis and ongoing treatment for chronic diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, hypertension and more.
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Healthcare costs are usually the biggest expense for large employers such as Walmart after wages. Americans spent over $880 billion in healthcare costs just in 2020. Frustrated with soaring costs, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos, launched a joint venture with Warren Buffett and Jaime Dimon called Haven. Haven did not get enough traction and disbanded in 2021, but in the meantime, Amazon’s secret lab Grand Challenge that develops long-term solutions, created Amazon Care working with Amazon’s HR department to better understand what employees were looking for.
Amazon worked closely with Haven on several pilots, trying out copay plans in 2020. Leveraging its knowledge from Haven and its own workforce, Amazon developed Amazon Care focused on non-emergency healthcare and Amazon Pharmacy to deliver medications via Amazon Prime.
Amazon Care is operated by Care Medical, a medical organization that works exclusively with Amazon and provides all the doctors, nurses and necessary support staff. Care Medical has been filing paperwork in numerous states since early March, as reported by Stat News.
Digital health options have been growing rapidly since the Covid-19 pandemic, but Amazon’s approach differs in providing both telemedicine and pharmacy services. It is also working on health wearables, connected devices and diagnostic labs. Taking care of non-emergency medical care 24/7, 365 days of the week along with prescription delivery and diagnostic testing eliminates two of the largest expenses that involve visits to the hospital and nursing home, according to Jeff Becker, healthcare analyst at CB Insights who spoke to Business Insider.
In the $3.8 trillion healthcare industry, existing telehealth providers took note of Amazon’s announcement. While this is the company's first entry into healthcare services beyond delivery of prescriptions and devices, Amazon’s launch reverberated through the industry as Amazon, a $1.6 trillion tech and shipping behemoth, has the capability and speed to deliver at scale. Shares in rival telehealth company Teladoc dropped more than 7%, while Amwell was down more than 5%.
Amazon has already upended industries that it entered as a newcomer, such as grocery shopping and delivery with its Amazon Fresh delivery service offered free of charge with an Amazon Prime subscription and its purchase of Whole Foods.
