Amazon Inc. is piloting a new healthcare benefit for employees by establishing local health centers near the company’s fulfillment centers and operations facilities across the country.
Amazon announced the first Neighborhood Health Center location will be available for its employees and their families in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The Seattle-based company is partnering with Crossover Health, which offers comprehensive primary care services.
The centers will provide a range of primary care services exclusively for Amazon employees. Through this initial pilot program, Amazon expects to establish 20 health centers in five cities across the United States, reaching more than 115,000 employees and their families. The cities involved are Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; Phoenix, AZ; Louisville, KY; Detroit, MI; and San Bernardino/Moreno Valley, CA. If the pilot is successful, the company will look to roll out similar facilities in other cities and states.
“Across the U.S., an increasing number of patients do not have easy access to a primary care physician and instead utilize emergency or urgent care options, which is not only more expensive for patients, but also overlooks important preventative care opportunities,” said Darcie Henry, Amazon’s vice president of human resources, in a statement. “We want to solve that for our employees, and the launch of these new Neighborhood Health Centers will provide a range of quality primary care services for employees across the country – further strengthening Amazon’s industry-leading benefits program, which provides comprehensive healthcare for employees starting on day one of employment.”
Amazon described Crossover Health as a national medical group that works with self-insured employers to connect every employee—in headquarters or in dispersed locations—to an integrated care team that delivers comprehensive primary care to the whole family.
Headquartered in San Clemente, Calif., Crossover serves hundreds of thousands of employees and dependents of some of the nation’s largest companies across the country. Its website notes that it began as a provider of comprehensive health services for self-insured employers with onsite and near-site health centers, and acquired Sherpaa Health, a pioneer of virtual primary care, in February 2019. In addition to virtual care, the Sherpaa platform also included care navigation and care management capabilities, including the ability to create a curated network of specialists in remote geographies and structured care plans that can be prescribed to members to ensure closed-loop follow-ups and best care outcomes.
The first Neighborhood Health Center for Amazon will be located in Las Colinas, Texas, with extended hours to accommodate various employee work schedules. The centers will provide full-spectrum acute, chronic, and preventive primary care, prescription medications, vaccinations, behavioral health services, physical therapy, chiropractic care, health coaching, and care navigation to specialty referral services.
