Is Amazon Getting Into the Healthcare Delivery Business?

Seattle, Washington-based Amazon.com, Inc. has announced that this summer it will launch Amazon Care across the United States.

In a blog post, Amazon announced that “Amazon Care is available to serve other Washington-based companies. Additionally, beginning this summer, Amazon Care will expand its virtual care to companies and Amazon employees in all 50 states across the U.S. Finally, Amazon Care’s in-person service will expand to Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and other cities in the coming months.”

The Amazon blog post promises that this will offer “millions of individuals and families immediate access to high-quality medical care and advice—24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

Amazon Care is one of Amazon’s many approaches to healthcare, combining telehealth with in-person care. What does this mean for the healthcare industry? Judge for yourself. Below we look at Amazon Care and Amazon’s dive into the healthcare space.

Amazon Care: Healthcare in Two Parts

In September 2019, Amazon launched Amazon Care. The service was initially available for Amazon employees and their families in the Seattle, Washington area. Amazon Care has two parts, virtual care and in-person care.

According to the Amazon blog post, virtual care “connects patients to medical professionals via the Amazon Care app (available for both Android and iOS) and allows patients to quickly, conveniently, and confidently chat live with a nurse or doctor, via in-app messaging or video.” With in-person care, “Amazon Care can dispatch a medical professional to a patient’s home for additional care, ranging from routine blood draws to listening to a patient’s lungs, and also offer prescription delivery right to a patient’s door.”

Patient care is provided via the Care Team. The Care Team is a “dedicated group of licensed doctors, nurse practitioners, and registered nurses.” According to the Amazon Care website, patients can connect with their Care Team “in seconds, day or night, on weekends, and holidays.”

The Care Team can provide a variety of services including ongoing and preventative care. Ongoing care helps manage conditions such as asthma, depression, and diabetes. Preventative care includes screenings and immunizations. Additionally, the Care Team can provide resources and treatment for lifestyle and wellness concerns as well as care coordination to assist in accessing specialized care.

Care Medical

Is Amazon providing these services directly? Not exactly. Since 2018, Amazon has contracted with Care Medical to provide telehealth and in-person care. According to its website, Care Medical is a “private, Seattle-based medical practice licensed in Washington State that provides urgent care and wellness services to Amazon Care members.”

Beyond Amazon Care

Amazon Care is not Amazon’s only health-related service offering. The past few years, Amazon has been busy, and has taken a shot at several other facets of the health industry.

In March 2021, a group of health care companies launched Moving Health Home. According to its website, Moving Health Home is “a coalition made up of stakeholders working to change federal and state policy to enable the home to be a clinical site of care.” Founding members of the coalition include Amazon Care, Landmark Health, Signify Health, Dispatch Health, Elara Caring, Intermountain Healthcare, Home Instead, and Ascension.

In December 2020, Amazon introduced HealthLake. HealthLake is a “HIPAA-eligible service that enables healthcare providers, health insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies to store, transform, query, and analyze health data at petabyte scale.”

In August 2020, Amazon launched Halo, a subscription service and accompanying fitness band that delivers a collection of health metrics.

In July 2020, Amazon began a pilot program with Crossover Health Medical Group to offer primary care clinics, called Neighborhood Health Centers, for its employees and their families. The program is considered a separate effort from Amazon Care. As of March 2021, there are 17 Neighborhood Health Centers in five cities.

In April 2019, Amazon announced that it was expanding its Alexa Skills Kit, the software development tool used to add functions, to build Alexa skills that transmit and receive protected health information. Now, it is possible for Alexa to perform a limited number of healthcare-related tasks.

In June 2018, Amazon bought PillPack for $750 million. PillPack is an independently operated subsidiary of Amazon. According to its website, it is a “full-service online pharmacy that packages your medication and delivers to your door every month.”

Amazon is huge and has the ability to impact nearly every facet of healthcare. From the above timeline, it is clear that Amazon is approaching healthcare from nearly every angle. However, just because Amazon is entering a segment, does not mean it is dominating that segment. Yet.

Whatever Happened to Haven?

Not everything Amazon touches turns to gold. Let’s not forget about Haven. In 2018, we came to you with news of a partnership between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Together, the three power houses announced that they were forming an independent health care company to serve their employees in the United States. For the full story, see “Amazon, Warren Buffet and JP Morgan in Healthcare. Why?”

Haven, a venture promising to disrupt the healthcare industry, has already disbanded. The announcement came in January, just three years after its initial launch. In a statement, Haven said, in part, “In the past three years, Haven explored a wide range of healthcare solutions, as well as piloted new ways to make primary care easier to access, insurance benefits simpler to understand and easier to use, and prescription drugs more affordable. Moving forward, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will leverage these insights and continue to collaborate informally to design programs tailored to address the specific needs of their own employee populations.”

Haven may be an example of how resources enable failure. And failure is not always a bad thing. Notably, Amazon’s ability to fail and pivot empowers the company to grow in many directions.

Amazon Care’s Impact on Healthcare

Since the Amazon Care announcement, analysts have been abuzz about the potential impact Amazon Care will have on the healthcare industry. Notably, the technology and services segment.

At least one analyst thinks that there is enough room in the healthcare market for everyone. In a note to investors, Canaccord Genuity Healthcare IT Analyst Richard Close commented, “Healthcare is big! What is so attractive about the healthcare market is that is very big and ripe for disruption. As highlighted in our primary care white paper, total spend on primary care in the U.S. is $260B [billion]; of that, $159B [billion] is in the commercial market. As such, it is VERY important to remember this is not a ‘zero sum game’ and that there can be multiple winners in various sub-segments of the healthcare ecosystem. There is plenty of room for many companies to be successful and continue to show respectable robust growth. Healthcare is an industry approaching $4 trillion annually and represents nearly 18% of GDP [gross domestic product].”

Close continued, “Finally, what we would re-emphasize is that the part of the segment that is facing the strongest competition is the status quo, traditional healthcare systems and providers.”

Looking Forward

Healthcare is big and Amazon is exploring numerous parts of the healthcare ecosystem. Maybe it is not a matter of whether Amazon will disrupt the healthcare industry but how? What Amazon business or service is going to change the healthcare landscape? Could it be Amazon Care? Potentially, depending on which companies Amazon targets this summer.

What does this mean for the orthopedic industry? If Amazon Care does deliver, then it may streamline the approach to services and access to care. This would include access to orthopedic services and care. Orthopedics is a large healthcare sector and sweeping efficiencies could help the industry better serve its patients. Both in the near term with the COVID-19 backlog and over time as more patients seek access to care.