Amazon continues to evolve its healthcare business more than a year after spending $3.9 billion on a primary care company.
The online retail giant is now folding its Amazon Clinic telehealth service into its One Medical primary care platform.
The company unveiled Amazon Clinic in November 2022 as a virtual medical clinic to provide care for many common health concerns. Last August, Amazon expanded Amazon Clinic to all 50 states, including nationwide telehealth services and video visits with providers on the Amazon website and mobile app.
Amazon Clinic had operated separately under the Amazon Health umbrella, which includes One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy.
Now, the service has been rebranded as Amazon One Medical Pay-per-visit telehealth for more than 30 common conditions, like pink eye, the flu or a sinus infection. The company saw an opportunity to bring all its medical services together under a single brand, executives said.
Consumers also have the option of an Amazon One Medical membership based on a monthly or annual fee for on-demand virtual care and the ability to book same and next-day appointments at One Medical offices, according to an Amazon blog post on Thursday morning. Amazon One Medical operates more than 150 primary care clinics across the U.S.
According to Amazon, the move to put the nationwide telehealth service under the One Medical umbrella gives consumers more care options. The company said it's also improving the service by making per-visit pricing even more affordable and reducing the number of steps it takes for customers to start a visit on Amazon.com and in the Amazon app, according to the blog post.
“It’s simply too hard to get the medical care you need, when you need it, and affordably—long waits, high costs, and impersonal care make it unnecessarily difficult for many patients today. We’re focused on improving both the occasional and ongoing medical care experience,” said Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, in a statement. “Amazon One Medical’s Pay-per-visit telehealth service makes it simpler for customers looking for care to see a provider, with fewer clicks and even lower per-visit pricing. With Amazon One Medical, customers can choose the medical care service that best meets their needs—a single visit for occasional, common conditions, or a membership that supports access to ongoing care with an app that makes things like getting on-demand virtual care, appointments and managing prescriptions fast and simple."
According to Amazon, One Medical’s Pay-per-visit telehealth service is a great option for customers who do not live near a One Medical office or for those who already have a different care provider, but need fast, convenient access to address a one-off condition.
Messaging visits cost $29, and video visits are priced at $49. The service does not take insurance, but FSA/HSA payment is accepted.
For messaging visits, a clinician reviews the customer's information, messages the customer, and customers respond at their convenience. The clinician then sends the customer a personalized treatment plan. For video visits, customers connect with a clinician in real time on a video call.
Over the past 18 months, Amazon Clinic inked partnerships with third-party telehealth providers to provide virtual consultation services. That virtual care marketplace included SteadyMD, Wheel, Hello Alpha and Curai Health.
As part of this rebrand, customers no longer choose their third-party telehealth provider.
Amazon said it will continue working with many of the same telehealth provider groups from Amazon Clinic to support Amazon One Medical Pay-per-visit.
Amazon offers a discounted One Medical membership for Prime members as a benefit for $9 per month, or $99 a year.
A standard Amazon One Medical membership costs $199 a year.
Membership provides patients with in-person annual “well visits” and preventive screenings at a One Medical office and services to manage new or ongoing conditions like asthma, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, lupus or other health concerns through in-person or virtual visits.
One Medical membership’s 24/7 on-demand virtual care includes video chats and in-app Treat Me Now services for immediate needs and common concerns like cold and flu, skin issues and allergies, at no extra cost. Members can also use the One Medical app to message their care team, access their health records, manage prescriptions and book same and next-day remote or in-office appointments at One Medical clinics.
One Medical has more than 150 primary care offices across the U.S., including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Ohio, Darien and New Canaan, Connecticut, Los Angeles and Orange County, Miami, New York City, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Washington, D.C. and Austin, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Houston in Texas.
Amazon One Medical has been building out its partnerships with health systems and employers. It inked a partnership with Health Transformation Alliance, expanding access to its primary care services to 67 employers and nearly 5 million employees.
The company already works with more than 8,500 companies to offer its primary care services as an employee health benefit.
One Medical also is collaborating with CommonSpirit Health's Virginia Mason Franciscan Health to provide the online retailer's primary care patients with access to specialty care. And, it expanded its primary care model to New Jersey in partnership with Hackensack Meridian Health, the state's largest health network.
With Amazon's deal to buy One Medical, the company placed another massive bet on its healthcare strategy—to the tune of nearly $4 billion.
Amazon's focus on being "customer-obsessed" makes the online retail giant an ideal company to take on the $4 trillion healthcare industry, Lindsay said at the HLTH 2023 conference. Amazon's strengths lie in logistics and supply chain to more easily connect consumers with products and services they need.
"In healthcare, we think of our mission as exactly that: It's to connect the dots between the humans, the customers, the patients and the products, services and professionals they need to get and stay healthy," Lindsay said during an onstage interview at the HLTH conference.
Amazon also moved into digital health earlier this year when it rolled out its health conditions program. The program aims to help customers find and enroll in virtual care benefits available to them through their employer or health plan. The online retailer tapped virtual-first chronic care provider Omada Health as its first partner.
There is skepticism about Amazon's ability to scale its healthcare initiatives as previous ventures have faltered. One of Amazon's most high-profile forays into healthcare, Haven, a company formed with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, shuttered after three years of operation.
In 2019, the company also launched a primary care service for its employees that blended telehealth and in-person medical services. Called Amazon Care, the service later expanded to outside employers and added in-person care options in more than 20 cities but then was shut down at the end of 2022.
Amazon's continued investment in telehealth services also comes as other companies are pulling back.
In May, Walmart announced it was shuttering all 51 health centers along with its virtual care services. Around the same time, there were reports that UnitedHealth, which owns Optum, shut down Optum Virtual Care. Optum launched the telehealth service just in 2021.
In February, Amazon confirmed it was eliminating a "few hundred roles" across One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy.
In a memo to employees shared with Fierce Healthcare, Lindsay said the company identified areas where it can "reposition resources to invest in invention and experiences that have a direct impact on customers and members."
"We will continue hiring providers and investing in teams and technology that will help us provide high-quality and accessible care to more people," Lindsay said in the memo.