Stakeholders See Reasons to Take Amazon Care Seriously
Although retail giant Amazon’s much-vaunted healthcare collaboration with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase collapsed, healthcare stakeholders are taking its recently announced expansion of Amazon Care seriously.
Launched 18 months ago, Amazon Care allows its employees to connect via app with medical professionals via chat or videoconference. It also has an in-home component. Amazon Care can dispatch a medical professional to a patient’s home for care ranging from routine blood draws to listening to a patient’s lungs, and also offer prescription delivery right to a patient’s door.
Amazon is now expanding the Amazon Care service to other employers in Washington state. Beginning this summer, Amazon Care will expand its virtual care to companies and Amazon employees in all 50 states. In the coming months, Amazon Care’s in-person service will also expand to Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and other cities.
On Twitter, Bob Wachter, M.D., chair of the UCSF Dept of Medicine, noted that “healthcare's been waiting (and fearing) entry of Amazon into ‘our space.’ Now Amazon Care represents the biggest foray into virtual care at scale. Many digital giants have failed at ‘disrupting’ healthcare (including Amazon's Haven), but I wouldn't bet against this.”
Lyle Berkowitz, M.D., is an informaticist, telehealth expert and angel investor who helped lead the growth of the MDLive telehealth platform. In a post on LinkedIn, he noted that Amaon Care’s virtual primary care offerings seem much deeper than other telehealth vendors, and that Amazon Care is pushing a hybrid model — both office and online. “I am sure they will bring in pharmacy soon,” he wrote. “Folks, this is the real deal if they can keep scaling (which, let's face it, Amazon is good at).” Among the things he wants to know: How many doctors are employed vs. contracted and what technology stack they use (or have built).
Paddy Padmanabhan, founder and CEO of Damo Consulting, issued a statement noting that Amazon has a history of making small acquisitions and using them as a crucible for experimentation – in this case, the Pillpack pharma distribution business and the Care Medical physician practice. “The Haven Healthcare debacle undoubtedly provided some invaluable learnings on the mechanics of primary care that Amazon has used to refine the Amazon Care offering,” he said.
As far as Amazon’s impact on other telehealth providers such as Teladoc, Padmanabhan added that the market has plenty of room for innovators and incumbents. “There isn’t going to be just one winner, and the overall market may even expand to accommodate new products and services,” he said. “Competition and innovation will result in lower costs and improved quality of care. In the emerging era of healthcare consumerism, the ones who succeed though will have good customer feedback loops, listen carefully to what customers need and want, and build their technology-led offerings to deliver superior customer experiences.”
Amazon Care is part of a recently formed coalition called Moving Health Home whose goal is to urge policymakers to think differently about reimbursement for clinical services provided in the home. The group says it is time to change reimbursement models and the culture around institutional care to allow for Americans to choose their home as a site of care. Making the home part of the regular options available to patients will allow for primary care, behavioral health, chronic disease management and even hospital-level care in the home.
