Amazon Care Service to Shutter As Company Shifts Health Care Approach
The telehealth and visiting nurse service started as a benefit for Amazon employees and spread to other companies.
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Despite the closure, Amazon is bulking up its health care offerings with the purchase of One Medical.
Amazon is closing down its homegrown health care provider at the end of 2022, the company told employees Wednesday. Amazon Care offered telehealth appointments and home nurse visits as a workplace benefit to people around the US.
The announcement comes as Amazon is poised to get more involved in health care, not less. In July, the company announced a deal to purchase One Medical, a primary care provider with brick-and-mortar clinics as well as telehealth offerings. The company also runs Amazon Pharmacy, which it created after acquiring PillPack in 2018.
Neil Lindsay, Amazon's senior vice president of health services, told employees in an email that Amazon Care wasn't going to succeed as a business, according to a copy of the email shared by Amazon.
"Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting," Lindsay said, adding it "wasn't going to work long-term."
Amazon Care started in 2019 as a benefit for the company's workers and relied on a third-party company to dispatch health care workers to peoples' homes and phones. Amazon then packaged it as a service other companies could offer their employees.