Amazon plans to shut down Amazon Care, the medical care service it sells to employer health plans, at the end of the year.
“We’ve determined that Amazon Care isn’t the right long-term solution for our enterprise customers, and have decided that we will no longer offer Amazon Care after December 31, 2022,” Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, wrote in the email to Amazon Health Services employees. Amazon shared the email with Modern Healthcare.
Amazon Care isn’t a “complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term,” he wrote.
Amazon launched Amazon Care as a virtual health clinic for its employees enrolled in an Amazon health insurance plan in 2019, and signed its first employer-customers, including Hilton and Silicon Labs, last year.
The announcement is an abrupt about-face for Amazon. As recently as February, Amazon Care said it would expand its in-person services to 20 cities in 2022. The program’s virtual services are available in all 50 states, according to its website.
Lindsay said he still believes that healthcare is “ripe for reinvention,” and the Amazon team will play a role in improving healthcare experience.
“Our work building Amazon Care has deepened our understanding of what’s needed long-term to deliver meaningful health care solutions for enterprise and individual customers,” he wrote. “This decision wasn’t made lightly and only became clear after many months of careful consideration.”
Amazon last month made a massive investment into its healthcare ambitions, announcing plans to acquire primary-care provider One Medical for $3.9 billion. Amazon Health Services also comprises Amazon’s diagnostics business and pharmacy service, which includes an online pharmacy it launched in 2020 that grew out of the company’s acquisition of PillPack.
And earlier this week, Amazon was identified as one of several companies reportedly bidding for Signify Health, a digital health company that specializes in at-home healthcare evaluations.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.