Tech giant Amazon has launched a virtual health clinic with in-person follow-up visits—including at home—for its employees and their families in the Seattle region.
Called Amazon Care, the service provides a mobile application that allows those who are eligible to access virtual and in-person healthcare services from medical practice Oasis Medical.
Oasis Medical, based in the state of Washington, provides an array of telemedicine and virtual-based services, such as in-app video visits and text chats with doctors. The types of services that Oasis Medical can address include acute urgent care needs—such as colds and respiratory infections, minor injuries, allergies—and preventative care consults, to name a few.
A CNBC report points out that “Amazon isn’t the only technology giant to launch its own health clinics for employees, rather than contract with a third party such as One Medical or Crossover Health. Apple has its own clinics, AC Wellness, which are based near its headquarters,” CNBC says. But Amazon’s foray into telemedicine appears to go beyond what most other tech companies have done, the report noted.
The CNBC story quoted an Amazon spokesperson who remarked, “Amazon Care eliminates travel and wait time, connecting employees and their family members to a physician or nurse practitioner through live chat or video, with the option for in-person follow up services from a registered nurse ranging from immunizations to instant strep throat detection.”
Last year, CNBC reported that Amazon was discussing opening primary care clinics at its Seattle headquarters. Those plans included hiring “a small number of doctors to start a pilot clinic later this year [2018] for a select group of employees and then expand it to more workers in early 2019,” the network reported at the time.
Further fueling those rumors, earlier this year, the company hired Martin Levine, M.D., who ran Iora Health’s Seattle-based clinics
Amazon Care is currently enrolling on a first-come, first-serve basis. Its services will be available Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
