Amazon Care is available to employees of half a dozen corporate customers, including Hilton, Silicon Labs, Precor, and Amazon-owned Whole Foods, and their employees. According to one of the people involved, the employee was told the service would be stopped because customers do not understand the value of the service. Dozens of employees will be out of work by the end of the year, people familiar with the matter said.
Amazon spokeswoman Christina Smith confirmed the decision and shared a memo announcing it with the Washington Post.
“This decision was not made lightly and was made clear after months of careful consideration.” Our registered members love many aspects of Amazon Care, but we It wasn’t a good enough service for our large enterprise customers, and it didn’t work in the long run.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post. Amazon first provided a letter announcing the closure to his GeekWire and his Fierce Healthcare.
Given Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s commitment to expanding Amazon’s healthcare investments, the decision to shut down Amazon Care comes as a surprise. It follows Amazon’s $3.9 billion acquisition of Concierge Healthcare startup One Medical last month, which could face antitrust scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission. I have.
In her 2021 letter to shareholders, Jassy cited Amazon Care as an example of “a kind of iterative innovation” that “permeates every team at Amazon.”
Amazon Care is now available virtually nationwide, with plans to expand to 20 cities for home care with mobile health nurses by the end of this year.
Last week, The Post reported on tensions between Amazon Care and the clinical staff the company sent to treat patients. These medical professionals work for an independent company called Care Medical, which is also closed. Six former employees told The Post that the two sides clashed over Amazon’s quick and frugal approach to expanding Amazon Care.
A former Amazon Care executive told The Post at the time: Crazy adoption for convenience. But healthcare is different. That’s hard. “
In response, Amazon’s Smith told The Post in an email that Amazon prioritizes patient and employee safety, stating that “Amazon Care has evolved for both patients and clinicians since the days of the pilot program. has improved,” he said.
In an email, Lindsay said Amazon Care employees will be able to take other jobs within Amazon and the company will “support employees looking for roles outside the company.”
In the letter, Amazon veteran Lindsay, who took over the company’s new health services division in December 2021, emphasized Amazon’s continued commitment to its healthcare business.
“Our vision is to give people easy access to the healthcare products and services they need to stay healthy. We know this will not be easy or fast to achieve. ,” he wrote.
This is the second major healthcare investment Amazon has scaled back. Haven, a health insurance venture co-founded by financial firms Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, closed last year.
The company continues to operate Amazon Pharmacy, a prescription ordering and delivery service spun out of its 2018 acquisition of Pillpack. The company’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, also has a large presence in healthcare, using machine learning to analyze healthcare data from large medical institutions and other companies. .
A year after becoming CEO, Jussy attempted to focus on Amazon’s business, closing some of its retail operations and slowing growth in its logistics division.
