In 2018, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase announced their venture into the healthcare space – Haven – a solution for their combined 1.2 million employees that would help establish “a better patient experience”. Concern over the rising cost of healthcare is a driver here, but how Haven intends to tackle this issue is still somewhat unclear.
Then last week, we saw some movement. Amazon announced the rollout of Amazon Care, a pilot program for its Seattle-based employees that provides a virtual clinic for urgent care, preventive consults, and sexual health services. The ‘clinic’ will combine telemedicine and home visits.
Read more about Amazon Care here.
XIL Health Insights
From the beginning, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase have positioned Haven as an effort to fill in the gaps in care for their employees. This is the beginning of that. Once this pilot works – they’re saving employees money and they’re doing it in a cost-effective way – Amazon will roll this out as a product. It goes beyond saving their employees – and themselves – on the cost of healthcare benefits. This is their chance to learn about the market. They’re able to apply their intelligence and experiment without an impact to their stock. There’s no risk of public failure and their takeaways will be tremendously valuable.
