By the end of the year, Amazon plans to discontinue Amazon Care, a virtual health service that it initially introduced in 2019. Amazon Care staff members were informed of the decision by the company.
Amazon Care started as a service for Seattle-based Amazon employees. It combined online medical assistance with the choice of a nurse visiting you at home. The business made the program available to companies in all 50 states who wanted to offer it to their employees. Even as late as this month the program was still being expanded.
The decision to discontinue an internal health service comes shortly after Amazon announced its intention to purchase primary care provider One Medical. Additionally, Signify Health, a business that develops technology for at-home healthcare, is also attractive to 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, and wasn’t going to work long-term,” Amazon senior vice president of health Neil Lindsay in an email to staff.
The last day of Amazon Care operations is December 31.