Amazon is shutting down its telehealth service
Amazon is shutting down its telehealth service
Amazon is shutting down its telehealth service. Corporate customers don’t see the value in Amazon Care and it won't work long-term.
Amazon is shutting down its telehealth service, Amazon Care, marking a major retreat by the retail behemoth in its efforts to break into the health care space.
Amazon's head for Amazon Health Services, Neil Lindsay, said in a corporate email on Wednesday that the programme would be discontinued after December 31. After deciding it wasn't "the ideal long-term solution for our enterprise customers," Lindsay wrote in the message, which was originally published by GeekWire, the e-commerce behemoth made the decision to make the change.
Despite the service's termination, Lindsay stated in the note that with the introduction of Amazon Care, the company was able to better learn "what's needed long-term to create significant health care solutions for enterprise and individual customers."
As a test programme for staff members in and around the company's Seattle headquarters, Amazon Care was introduced in 2019. The service offers virtual urgent care visits, free telemedicine consultations, and in-home nurse visits for testing and immunizations for a cost.
Its current client list includes Hilton, Whole Foods Market, and Peloton-acquired Precor. But it struggled to find broad appeal among employers, according to the email, which was sent to employees late Wednesday afternoon and first reported by Fierce Healthcare and Geekwire.