DX Deals: Amazon Launches Third Attempt to Disrupt Healthcare Business—This Time, It May Just Work

“I’ll be back.”

That was Amazon’s parting message to employees and the market when it announced plans to shutter Amazon Care back in August. (See, “Amazon Ends Telehealth Services, but Forges Ahead with Healthcare Disruption,” LIR, August 30, 2022.) Having twice failed to disrupt health care, Amazon stated its determination to “continue to invent, learn from our customers and industry partners…as we further help reimagine the future of health care.” Now the Seattle-based e-commerce giant is rolling out a new healthcare venture. But instead of replicating traditional healthcare models the way its predecessors did, this new venture adheres more closely to the strategy that Amazon used to reconstruct the retail business.

The Amazon Clinic

Amazon’s dominance in retail is built on its capacity to connect directly with customers via virtual means. Stated simply, Amazon is really good at making it easy, inexpensive, and convenient for customers to get what they want from the marketplace. So, rather than construct its own provider network, this time Amazon is offering a direct-to-consumer service marketplace where customers can get the treatments they need via text or other digital messaging.

According to the new service’s website, Amazon Clinic uses a secure portal to give patients in 32 states virtual access to outsourced US-based doctors and nurse practitioners (NPs) who can offer personalized treatments and prescriptions for more than 20 different medical conditions ranging from hair loss to headaches. There’s no video or audio interaction, other than the photos some patients may have to send to document their conditions. The way it works:

• Customers choose a clinic online;
• They then fill out an intake questionnaire;
• A doctor or NP reviews their medical information from the questionnaire;
• The customer receives a treatment plan that may include prescriptions or behavioral recommendations; and
• Customers have access to their clinician for up to 14 days, at no additional cost, in case they have follow-up questions.

Customers pay a flat fee for services, with costs varying by clinic and treatment. Amazon contends that costs, typically $30 to $40 per consultation, are often less than the co-pays that customers would have to make if they had to use their doctor. Of course, there are also no waiting rooms. The fee doesn’t cover the costs of medications.

Although health insurance isn’t accepted, customers can submit their Amazon Clinic receipts to their health insurer for reimbursement. Amazon Clinic also accepts health savings accounts and flexible account debit cards. An online treatment page enables customers to compare costs. Customers can also have their prescriptions filled at a pharmacy of their choice. The healthcare service’s website adds, however, that “Amazon Clinic isn’t intended for individuals who receive coverage from federal or state healthcare payors.”

Amazon Clinic leverages the network of boutique primary care and telehealth physician practices that Amazon is in the process of acquiring via its $3.9 billion purchase of One Medical. The San Francisco-based firm, which defied the pandemic headwinds by going public in 2020, oversees 188 medical offices in 25 markets.

Amazon Clinic will be competing with other business offering virtual personalized treatment plans like Ro and Hims & Hers. Although it’s currently available in 32 states, Amazon Clinic expects to expand rapidly in the months to come.

References:

1.    https://www.g2intelligence.com/amazon-ends-telehealth-services-but-forges-ahead-with-healthcare-disruption/

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This article originally appeared in G2 Intelligence, Laboratory Industry Report, December 2022.