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Amazon to Acquire One Medical

212 points by ejb999 4y ago

ejb999 4y ago
Today Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and One Medical (NASDAQ:ONEM) announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire One Medical. One Medical is a human-centered, technology-powered national primary care organization on a mission to make quality care more affordable, accessible, and enjoyable through a seamless combination of in-person, digital, and virtual care services that are convenient to where people work, shop, and live.
Sentino 4y ago
Huiuiu something will change the usa health care system. Old companies should be careful. And don't forget the other company who is already working in making drugs much cheaper.
candyman 4y ago
Amazon has a terrible track record in healthcare - with both internal efforts and acquisitions. I figured they had given up but this acquisition suggests otherwise. I think the business is just too different from what they know for them to really commit to it and be successful. It's a nice rescue for $ONEM stock holders!!!
- ctvo 4y ago
  What other Amazon efforts in health care are you aware of and what other acquisitions have there been to call their record terrible? I'm only aware of https://amazon.care/ https://amazon.care/
  - 1986 4y ago
    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/04/haven-the-amazon-berkshire-jpmorgan-venture-to-disrupt-healthcare-is-disbanding-after-3-years.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/04/haven-the-amazon-berkshire-j...
  - discodave 4y ago
    They bought Pillpack. They also announced a big partnership with Berkshire that went... nowhere? I also know of a big secret-project kinda effort, where they were employing research scientists, and other people with very specialized knowledge of protein design... all those people are no longer at Amazon.
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      I think the Berk partnership led to Amazon care (and probably this).
    - Infinitesimus 4y ago
      Amazon Pharmacy still exists though and I'm sure you know there are always many projects within Amazon that don't become public until much later.
- dheera 4y ago
  I use Amazon Pharmacy and thoroughly happy with it. Local pharmacies were modifying prescriptions on the way from the doctors' office to the pharmacy by insurance request and Amazon doesn't do that, or at least, Amazon lets me get them as-prescribed and not use insurance. Plus, their uninsured price is actually cheaper than the local pharmacy's copay price in many cases. I live in California, if relevant.
  - zamalek 4y ago
    This has been my experience too. After a move across the country, I requested CVS to take over my prescription. I can't remember the specifics, but they botched it in the most incompetent way possible. My doctor recommended asking for a few pills to tide me over while they figured it out, and the very same people who botched it treated me like a drug seeker (for drugs with no recreational use, no less). Amazon were able to find and transfer my prescription in less than 10 minutes. The prescription was on my doorstep a day later. For this very specific scenario, I wouldn't agree that Amazon is winning because they are big vs. small. It is more competent vs. incompetent. > their uninsured price is actually cheaper Yep, I don't use insurance to pay for my prescription.
    - dheera 4y ago
      Yep also Amazon gets the need for 180 day refills and will happily issue refills a month or even more in advance. Local pharmacy would often only give 30 days at a time and not refill until 3 days before the 30 days is over, are they fucking crazy do they think people don't travel? There are things called planes and trains that they might not yet have heard of, they get people around the world, so I don't sit at home in CA all year
  - NelsonMinar 4y ago
    I'm also having a reasonably good experience with Amazon Pharmacy (aka PillPack). The website actually works, which is more than can be said for any other mail-order pharmacy. Same stupid pricing and insurance hijinx as any other pharmacy but Amazon seems to do a reasonably good job interfacing with that horribly broken industry.
- kgwgk 4y ago
  https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/technology/amazon-jpmorgan-chase-berkshire-hathaway-healthcare-costs-technology-pharmacy https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/technology/amazon-jpmorgan-...
- metadat 4y ago
  The pressure is on now that Oracle acquired CERNER. Healthcare is the obvious golden goose in the long-term.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nerdjon 4y ago
This makes me wonder, all of these boutique healthcare companies (One Medical, Forward, and others that I just don't know about) are they actually profitable or are they all just needing to be bought out? On the other side, I am really curious where this makes any sense for Amazon? I could see arguments about healthcare for their employees (didn't they bring that in house or something?), "synergy" with them using AWS (and maybe improvements to medical related services in AWS), and/or something related to their 2 prescription offerings. But outside of those few things... I am unclear where this one is coming from for Amazon.
- ejb999 4y ago
  I work in the healthcare space - (I am no expert on how to fix it), but my two cents is there is so much inefficiency right now across the board that is just crying out for automation and complete revamp in how services are provided - which I suspect amazon could improve - if I had to guess though, where they are going to run into problems is if/when they start treating providers (MDs, NPs, PAs) like interchangeable widgets, that many will not want to work for amazon and will head for the exit - unless the pay is much better than they can get elsewhere.
  - decafninja 4y ago
    I use a rival service of One Medical provided by my employer. It’s…amazing. It’s not perfect, but it removes so much of the hassle involved in going through the “legacy” medical system, at least for routine and minor things. My understanding is that these are “concierge lite” services, and full blown concierge medicine services like MD2 are a whole magnitude even better. Albeit at the cost of paying five figure annual membership fees.
    - SmellTheGlove 4y ago
      What service is that? My family uses one medical and we’ve become pretty unhappy with it over the past year. I’d be happy to try something else.
  - nerdjon 4y ago
willcipriano 4y ago
I'm kinda-sorta a healthcare IT expert at this point and Amazon has been harassing me to interview with them ceaselessly in the past 3 months or so. I wonder if this was the reason.
- extant_lifeform 4y ago
  Prolly not, Amazon recruitment is a sh*tshow they try to hire Amazon employees to Amazon sometimes.
  - shepherdjerred 4y ago
    I loved getting those emails
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Amazon is basically asking everyone in the industry to interview right now, especially if you already work at a top tier company. You can’t really get them to stop, I just expect an email a week from them ATM
weezin 4y ago
Weird they would acquire a company similar to what they are already doing with Amazon Care.
- saos 4y ago
  Swallow the competition. And take market share. Amazon are a true conglomerate
  - FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    Let me fix that for you: Amazon is a true monopoly
    - capitalsigma 4y ago
      Yes, Amazon, the infamous healthcare monopoly
- jpm_sd 4y ago
  This type of move is often a signal that the internal effort is not going well, so upper management has decided to acqui-hire a team who (supposedly) knows how to do it properly.
  - b112 4y ago
    And then in proper fashion, put the acquired under management of the in house team, so the acquired can be told how they are doing it wrong.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  Amazon also acquired Whole Foods while expanding Amazon Fresh. It's easier to acquire a bunch of existing locations and customers than to bootstrap them.
chevman 4y ago
At the scale of Amazon sized companies in the US, healthcare costs become part of the strategic equation of how you manage your business. Get large enough (you will have moved beyond fully insured plans to self ensuring your population long ago) and you'll continue to look at opportunities further down the supply chain in actual healthcare delivery itself to better manage, forecast, and optimize costs. Primary care and Rx are usually the first place to go. My guess is this is as much about that dynamic, as it is about buying some good leadership (look at the board/leadership of One Medical and you'll see many familiar faces if you are in heathcare/plan/PBM space). Will be very interested to see if they keep this mainly in house, or if they begin to scale beyond that.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > At the scale of Amazon sized companies in the US, healthcare costs become part of the strategic equation of how you manage your business. Amazon employ about 1.3 million staff. Say you wanted to provide healthcare for your employee's families too, so we'll pick about 2.75 million in total (because I'm guessing that a lot of Amazon employees have a partner but no children). That puts you at roughly half the population of Scotland. Scotland spends about £16 billion a year on healthcare, for everyone in all stages of life, many of whom have extremely complex healthcare needs. To provide the equivalent of NHS Scotland to an Amazon-size company you'd get change out of £8bn, and that would provide things like free prescriptions, and all healthcare requirements free at point of need. I bet you could sharpen the pencil a bit on that since you've already got massive supply chain logistics in place. That's not a lot of money really.
  - biztos 4y ago
    So Scotland pays about £3000 per person per year for all health care? That's slightly more than my deductible in Germany, and about half what I pay for private insurance for one person. Seems like Prime Health Care could be a good business, and "dogfooding" it on their own employees for a few years would be the obvious way to streamline it. Then again, I can't imagine doctors would be happy with the AWS Management Console experience...
shmatt 4y ago
Google gives One Medical 10% of their revenue, plus they have OM offices embedded in Google offices. I wonder if this continues and Google lets Amazon employees on premises to collect medical information about their employees Personally my experience with One Medical went from amazed in 2015 to pretty bad by 2019. They will charge your insurance for a doctors visit but only have Nurses and P.A's available to see. I don't even know the legality of that, but it definitely didn't feel like they were replacing having a personal doctor follow your health The few M.D's i did like left within a year or two, always
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  If you're looking for a more boutique experience and being able to see an actual doctor, I highly recommend Forward Medical (goforward.com) which I've used for a few years and have had nothing but great experiences with.
  - FollowingTheDao 4y ago
    I am just looking for health care but what can I do? I am just a homeless guy with schizoaffective Bipolar and Ankylosing Spondylitis trying to get better so he can work again.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      Rough hand. Know you've got someone thinking about you in the UK.
    - pibechorro 4y ago
      Charity can more than help those who fall through the cracks. Th Charity of individuals, nonprofits and private companies that realize investing in helping people will help their brand. Think of all the money that is wasted in todays system. Its not a lack of money,its how its badly spent and all the red tape in between. Much more efficient to let individuals manage it than a burocracy based on forced taxation which leads to a lack of accountability as poor performance still gets funding.
axg11 4y ago
I expect this won't be the last acquisition on the health front. All tech-adjacent companies are cheap right now and Amazon is making a big push into health (Amazon Care & Pharmacy). More of these acquisitions can accelerate plans. As a bonus, One Medical already runs on AWS.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
This means two things: 1) Worse health care 2) Medicare for All is dead in the U.S.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  What about this acquisition makes you say that?
adregan 4y ago
Probably too late, but is there a way to prevent my one medical records from going to Amazon?
- adregan 4y ago
  Follow up: Called one medical support, and it doesn’t look like there is any data deletion process. Apparently, the heath record will be held for 7 years and the best I can do is delete my account. Hoping a process will soon form but this seems like a run around of HIPAA to me. All you need is enough money to buy a company and you get a lot of juicy health data.
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    In theory, under HIPAA, your protected health information (PHI) can't just be given to everybody at Amazon. One Medical can only share it for specific, generally pretty legitimate reasons. HIPAA is pretty strict, and Amazon will be under a lot of scrutiny, so I, personally, would not be worried about them, e.g., using my PHI to try to market stuff to me, or selling it off to the highest bidders. Here are some PDF fact sheets on the uses and disclosures allowed under HIPAA: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/exchange_health_care_ops.pdf https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/exchange_health_care... https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/exchange_treatment.pdf https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/exchange_treatment.p... The bad news is they probably don't need to do this, because they have more valuable data than this on you already. :\
    - Terretta 4y ago
      > legitimate reasons This is another term that doesn’t legally mean what people colloquially think it means.
  - pc86 4y ago
    For the record this isn't just a OM thing. There is no provision whereby you can request that your valid, correct medical data be deleted. 7 years is a pretty common timeframe to hold on to stuff in a "just in case" sense, after which point the provider may or may not delete it. Larger providers have a ton of this data and delete it the second they can - when I worked in healthcare software we had large clients who would run deletion scripts twice a day, literally deleting stuff that crossed the 7 year threshold a few hours ago, to keep the storage as minimal as possible. HIPAA cares much more about how you use data and who can get to it and why, than whether or not you have it in the first place (it cares about both to an extent). Calling this "a run around of HIPAA" is pretty silly, honestly.
thenerdhead 4y ago
I literally got a recruiter message about working for Amazon Healthcare and had no idea what is was. This seems like it…
- __derek__ 4y ago
  Amazon Care[1] launched a few years ago. [1]: https://amazon.care/ https://amazon.care/
  - thenerdhead 4y ago
    It is called "Amazon HealthCare" is this different?
    - __derek__ 4y ago
      I don't know. It wouldn't be surprising if the Amazon Care product rolls up into an Amazon Healthcare organization, while it would be somewhat surprising if recruiters started working to staff a new acquisition before it was publicly announced, let alone closed.
ginko 4y ago
Can someone explain to me what value there is to allowing an online book store to use their funds gained in completely different industries to strong-arm itself into the healthcare business?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bergenty 4y ago
  We’re way past the online bookstore phase.
s1mon 4y ago
This was definitely not on my Bingo card. I've been a customer of One Medical for a while. I really like the convenience and simplicity of booking in person appointments using an app on relatively short notice, and their video visits are often all you need for peace of mind or a simple prescription. I've also been a customer of Amazon for [checks order history, gulp] 24 years. I have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. I was also a customer of Whole Foods for many many years. When Amazon bought Whole Foods, it kinda stayed the same, but there are enough subtle differences that it's a bit like a Truman Show version of itself. We stopped shopping there. I hope I don't have to stop using One Medical. I'm not normally super paranoid about data privacy, but this doesn't feel good to me.
- b112 4y ago
  You can probably afford to pay for all medical costs, out of pocket, now that you stopped buying at Wholefoods...
  - diogenescynic 4y ago
    I know it's a meme that WholeFoods is expensive, but I've actually found it pretty comparable in price to other local organic markets and co-ops. I think a decade ago it was definitely more exclusive, but now it's in the same ballpark--I actually find WholeFood's veggies, fruits, meat, and cheese are cheaper than my local co-op.
    - dmicah 4y ago
      Maybe it was just local competition, but in college a gallon of milk at Whole Foods was about $.25 cheaper than the Safeway across the street.
      - potatochup 4y ago
        Milk is a classic loss leader though. It's (intentionally) hard to compare overall prices between supermarkets
      - 4y ago
nosefrog 4y ago
Has anyone else noticed that OneMedical doesn't do full blood tests during yearly screenings anymore? My girlfriend had to beg for a vitamin d test last time she went (they said she didn't need one because she looked healthy, and when she got her results it said she was low on vitamin d), and last time I went they only screened me for cholesterol because I told them I wasn't vegan anymore and that I've developed a taco bell habit.
- ajaimk 4y ago
  Every time a doctor refuses a test you asked for, you just need to ask them to provide it in writing that they refused to provide you that test. They will magically give you the test after that :-)
  - pc86 4y ago
    This is even easier now that most providers are (rightfully) giving patients electronic access to their charts. I requested a blood test once, the doctor refused saying it was unnecessary, I asked that it get documented in my chart. He said fine, but didn't. When I sent a message asking that his note be updated to include that I requested the test and was told it was unnecessary, I got a call from the office... to schedule the test. If you're particularly averse to confrontation you could do the above and even skip directly asking them to document the refusal. It would probably have the same end result.
- zten 4y ago
  I know this is the wrong answer, because you should be expecting reasonable care from your physician, but if you're on an HDHP plan just buy the service from LabCorp and reimburse yourself. For some reason, direct-to-consumer blood work is becoming a thing.
  - bergenty 4y ago
    Yeah but I’d like the doctor to interpret it for me. Especially on parameters that have dependencies.
_moof 4y ago
Hard-pressed to think of any company I'd trust less with my medical records. Maybe Google.
- ctvo 4y ago
  Really? Meta, Google, ByteDance, Twitter, …
  - _moof 4y ago
    Ok, Meta for sure. Twitter wouldn't be awesome but I'd take them over anyone else on the list so far. Edit: Oh, and then there's Palantir, Oracle, Salesforce... you know what, how about we just keep tech out of healthcare?
    - ctvo 4y ago
      Twitter is on my list because Musk may end up owning it as a private company. I’m creeped out imagining Musk with unfettered access to medical care over a large population. Come in for a physical and leave unexpectedly pregnant because ole galaxy brain thinks we need a larger population. Or more likely, sign up and pay 100K for Full Cancer Cure and 15 years later it’s still in beta and sometimes clearing a small variant of skin cancer, but also sometimes outright killing you.
  - smegsicle 4y ago
    wasn't meta originally a medical research company? pretty soon we'll see amazon rebrand as "ONE"
saulrh 4y ago
It's kind of depressing that the US economy and US healthcare industry is so fucked that it's cheaper for a megacorporation (Walmart, Amazon) to set up a private little single-payer state inside itself. That's really what this is - if you own your own doctors, you can close the payment loop, remove the entire insurance industry from the equation and all of its misaligned incentives and bureaucratic overhead. Kind of inspiring, in a way, that we're so advanced technologically and organizationally that it's in striking range for non-state actors, but also terrifying. We continue to live in the worst cyberpunk utopia.
- ctvo 4y ago
  > We continue to live in the worst cyberpunk utopia. I sometimes think Bezos doesn’t get into politics because he’s saving himself from a conflict of interest when he becomes president of the corpo-state of Amazonia. Oh, and he’s also not that charismatic.
- drc500free 4y ago
  Is this significantly different from HMOs, which have existed for at least half a century? Kaiser has been doing basically this for a while now.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    Is a canoe different from a speed boat? In some ways not at all, in some quite a bit. Depends on what you're trying to explain or do with it. The fundamental similarities don't override the differences and in this case I think "it's owned by a union-busting monopolistic megacorporation that is currently redefining labor relations and probably not in a good way" is enough to make it valuable to consider it a different thing.
    - drc500free 4y ago
      Kaiser runs massive complex hospital systems, does $93B in revenue, and employs over 200,000 people. One Medical runs a handful of standalone primary care offices with bougie waiting rooms, does $250M in revenue, and employs 3,000 people. It's something to keep an eye on, but if there's a canoe in this analogy it's the one Amazon just bought. Maybe they can turn it into a full navy one day.
nikolay 4y ago
I was trying to become a One Medical customer for months. Their defunct signup process (at least in Orange County) pushed me away. Hopefully Amazon puts their technology where it must be in 2022!
smiddereens 4y ago
avanai 4y ago
From a medical provider friend who works at One Medical: “I won't wear a tracking device and see 40 patients while wearing a catheter”
siliconc0w 4y ago
+1s that One Medical has gone down hill. Latest issue was getting charged like $300 for a 5 minute video appointment which quickly concluded that I should schedule an in-person if the symptom persisted. This was coded to my insurance as a 30 minute 'medium to high complexity' patient interaction.
felipellrocha 4y ago
I do not need amazon to have my medical records. I guess it’s time to cancel that subscription.
vyrotek 4y ago
If this goes like their acquisition of PillPack it will be trainwreck behind the scenes when they try to push the Amazon way of doing things onto them.
kelnos 4y ago
I've been pretty happy with OM (member since 2014 or 2015 or so), but would only consider staying with them under Amazon if someone with some healthcare-related legal expertise could come up with a plain-English explanation of what Amazon will and will not be allowed to do with my medical data. If it's pretty much status quo, and Amazon won't be able to do anything with it (like recommend products based on my medical history, ugh), then I'll probably stick with OM. Otherwise... no, thank you.
nikolay 4y ago
For years, One Medical didn't figure out that a child has more than one parents and that there could be more than one child in a family! How can a medical establishment with claims to fame not get such simple concepts - 1+ parents with 0+ children! This is the same with many other companies such as Facebook, Google, etc. Only Microsoft gets it! Even Amazon sucks with their "family" plan. Recently, Instacart did the same idiotic "family" plan killing the shared cart concept along the way! When will product managers finally be people representing much of the population?!
geoffcline 4y ago
> I wonder if this continues and Google lets Amazon employees on premises to collect medical information about their employees This is a misunderstanding of the acquisition, and how OneMedical operates. OneMedical (1Life Healthcare) is a tech company that makes the OneMedical app. They also make electronic health record and clinic management software. You can visit health clinics branded as "OneMedical" without being a member. You just can't use the app. OneMedical Clinics use the platform, but are (generally, it's complicated) privately owned by a physicians group. In Austin, the OneMedical medical staff are associated with Ascension Seton Physicians Group (may have a slightly different name). They aren't Amazon employees. The medical staff isn't accountable to Amazon leadership/shareholders. They are accountable to other medical professionals. This is similar to law firms. Side note: this is one reason why innovating in these fields is very challenging. This is the same for Amazon Care. The practicing medical professionals are not employees of Amazon. It is possible that the clinics embedded in Google locations may discontinue licensing/using the OneMedical branding. They may also transition to using another platform, such as EpicCare, to coordinate patient records, scheduling, and Telehealth.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  In Seattle, they’re part of Swedish, one of the major health providers in the area. The doctors are part of the Swedish staff directory and the insurance billing is done from their physician account.
Dowwie 4y ago
The innovative business model of the American healthcare system today consists of a physician's office scheduling patients to see the doctor but getting nurse practitioners instead, yet charging for the physician's services. Doesn't seem legal, and isn't the care that patients have signed up for.

212 points by ejb999 4y ago

Today Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and One Medical (NASDAQ:ONEM) announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire One Medical. One Medical is a human-centered, technology-powered national primary care organization on a mission to make quality care more affordable, accessible, and enjoyable through a seamless combination of in-person, digital, and virtual care services that are convenient to where people work, shop, and live.

Sentino 4y ago

Huiuiu something will change the usa health care system. Old companies should be careful. And don't forget the other company who is already working in making drugs much cheaper.

candyman 4y ago

Amazon has a terrible track record in healthcare - with both internal efforts and acquisitions. I figured they had given up but this acquisition suggests otherwise. I think the business is just too different from what they know for them to really commit to it and be successful. It's a nice rescue for $ONEM stock holders!!!

ctvo 4y ago
What other Amazon efforts in health care are you aware of and what other acquisitions have there been to call their record terrible? I'm only aware of https://amazon.care/ https://amazon.care/
- 1986 4y ago
  https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/04/haven-the-amazon-berkshire-jpmorgan-venture-to-disrupt-healthcare-is-disbanding-after-3-years.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/04/haven-the-amazon-berkshire-j...
- discodave 4y ago
  They bought Pillpack. They also announced a big partnership with Berkshire that went... nowhere? I also know of a big secret-project kinda effort, where they were employing research scientists, and other people with very specialized knowledge of protein design... all those people are no longer at Amazon.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    I think the Berk partnership led to Amazon care (and probably this).
  - Infinitesimus 4y ago
    Amazon Pharmacy still exists though and I'm sure you know there are always many projects within Amazon that don't become public until much later.
dheera 4y ago
I use Amazon Pharmacy and thoroughly happy with it. Local pharmacies were modifying prescriptions on the way from the doctors' office to the pharmacy by insurance request and Amazon doesn't do that, or at least, Amazon lets me get them as-prescribed and not use insurance. Plus, their uninsured price is actually cheaper than the local pharmacy's copay price in many cases. I live in California, if relevant.
- zamalek 4y ago
  This has been my experience too. After a move across the country, I requested CVS to take over my prescription. I can't remember the specifics, but they botched it in the most incompetent way possible. My doctor recommended asking for a few pills to tide me over while they figured it out, and the very same people who botched it treated me like a drug seeker (for drugs with no recreational use, no less). Amazon were able to find and transfer my prescription in less than 10 minutes. The prescription was on my doorstep a day later. For this very specific scenario, I wouldn't agree that Amazon is winning because they are big vs. small. It is more competent vs. incompetent. > their uninsured price is actually cheaper Yep, I don't use insurance to pay for my prescription.
  - dheera 4y ago
    Yep also Amazon gets the need for 180 day refills and will happily issue refills a month or even more in advance. Local pharmacy would often only give 30 days at a time and not refill until 3 days before the 30 days is over, are they fucking crazy do they think people don't travel? There are things called planes and trains that they might not yet have heard of, they get people around the world, so I don't sit at home in CA all year
- NelsonMinar 4y ago
  I'm also having a reasonably good experience with Amazon Pharmacy (aka PillPack). The website actually works, which is more than can be said for any other mail-order pharmacy. Same stupid pricing and insurance hijinx as any other pharmacy but Amazon seems to do a reasonably good job interfacing with that horribly broken industry.
kgwgk 4y ago
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/technology/amazon-jpmorgan-chase-berkshire-hathaway-healthcare-costs-technology-pharmacy https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/technology/amazon-jpmorgan-...
metadat 4y ago
The pressure is on now that Oracle acquired CERNER. Healthcare is the obvious golden goose in the long-term.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nerdjon 4y ago

This makes me wonder, all of these boutique healthcare companies (One Medical, Forward, and others that I just don't know about) are they actually profitable or are they all just needing to be bought out? On the other side, I am really curious where this makes any sense for Amazon? I could see arguments about healthcare for their employees (didn't they bring that in house or something?), "synergy" with them using AWS (and maybe improvements to medical related services in AWS), and/or something related to their 2 prescription offerings. But outside of those few things... I am unclear where this one is coming from for Amazon.

ejb999 4y ago
I work in the healthcare space - (I am no expert on how to fix it), but my two cents is there is so much inefficiency right now across the board that is just crying out for automation and complete revamp in how services are provided - which I suspect amazon could improve - if I had to guess though, where they are going to run into problems is if/when they start treating providers (MDs, NPs, PAs) like interchangeable widgets, that many will not want to work for amazon and will head for the exit - unless the pay is much better than they can get elsewhere.
- decafninja 4y ago
  I use a rival service of One Medical provided by my employer. It’s…amazing. It’s not perfect, but it removes so much of the hassle involved in going through the “legacy” medical system, at least for routine and minor things. My understanding is that these are “concierge lite” services, and full blown concierge medicine services like MD2 are a whole magnitude even better. Albeit at the cost of paying five figure annual membership fees.
  - SmellTheGlove 4y ago
    What service is that? My family uses one medical and we’ve become pretty unhappy with it over the past year. I’d be happy to try something else.
- nerdjon 4y ago

willcipriano 4y ago

I'm kinda-sorta a healthcare IT expert at this point and Amazon has been harassing me to interview with them ceaselessly in the past 3 months or so. I wonder if this was the reason.

extant_lifeform 4y ago
Prolly not, Amazon recruitment is a sh*tshow they try to hire Amazon employees to Amazon sometimes.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  I loved getting those emails
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Amazon is basically asking everyone in the industry to interview right now, especially if you already work at a top tier company. You can’t really get them to stop, I just expect an email a week from them ATM

weezin 4y ago

Weird they would acquire a company similar to what they are already doing with Amazon Care.

saos 4y ago
Swallow the competition. And take market share. Amazon are a true conglomerate
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  Let me fix that for you: Amazon is a true monopoly
  - capitalsigma 4y ago
    Yes, Amazon, the infamous healthcare monopoly
jpm_sd 4y ago
This type of move is often a signal that the internal effort is not going well, so upper management has decided to acqui-hire a team who (supposedly) knows how to do it properly.
- b112 4y ago
  And then in proper fashion, put the acquired under management of the in house team, so the acquired can be told how they are doing it wrong.
__derek__ 4y ago
Amazon also acquired Whole Foods while expanding Amazon Fresh. It's easier to acquire a bunch of existing locations and customers than to bootstrap them.

chevman 4y ago

At the scale of Amazon sized companies in the US, healthcare costs become part of the strategic equation of how you manage your business. Get large enough (you will have moved beyond fully insured plans to self ensuring your population long ago) and you'll continue to look at opportunities further down the supply chain in actual healthcare delivery itself to better manage, forecast, and optimize costs. Primary care and Rx are usually the first place to go. My guess is this is as much about that dynamic, as it is about buying some good leadership (look at the board/leadership of One Medical and you'll see many familiar faces if you are in heathcare/plan/PBM space). Will be very interested to see if they keep this mainly in house, or if they begin to scale beyond that.

Gordonjcp 4y ago
> At the scale of Amazon sized companies in the US, healthcare costs become part of the strategic equation of how you manage your business. Amazon employ about 1.3 million staff. Say you wanted to provide healthcare for your employee's families too, so we'll pick about 2.75 million in total (because I'm guessing that a lot of Amazon employees have a partner but no children). That puts you at roughly half the population of Scotland. Scotland spends about £16 billion a year on healthcare, for everyone in all stages of life, many of whom have extremely complex healthcare needs. To provide the equivalent of NHS Scotland to an Amazon-size company you'd get change out of £8bn, and that would provide things like free prescriptions, and all healthcare requirements free at point of need. I bet you could sharpen the pencil a bit on that since you've already got massive supply chain logistics in place. That's not a lot of money really.
- biztos 4y ago
  So Scotland pays about £3000 per person per year for all health care? That's slightly more than my deductible in Germany, and about half what I pay for private insurance for one person. Seems like Prime Health Care could be a good business, and "dogfooding" it on their own employees for a few years would be the obvious way to streamline it. Then again, I can't imagine doctors would be happy with the AWS Management Console experience...

shmatt 4y ago

Google gives One Medical 10% of their revenue, plus they have OM offices embedded in Google offices. I wonder if this continues and Google lets Amazon employees on premises to collect medical information about their employees Personally my experience with One Medical went from amazed in 2015 to pretty bad by 2019. They will charge your insurance for a doctors visit but only have Nurses and P.A's available to see. I don't even know the legality of that, but it definitely didn't feel like they were replacing having a personal doctor follow your health The few M.D's i did like left within a year or two, always

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
If you're looking for a more boutique experience and being able to see an actual doctor, I highly recommend Forward Medical (goforward.com) which I've used for a few years and have had nothing but great experiences with.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  I am just looking for health care but what can I do? I am just a homeless guy with schizoaffective Bipolar and Ankylosing Spondylitis trying to get better so he can work again.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Rough hand. Know you've got someone thinking about you in the UK.
  - pibechorro 4y ago
    Charity can more than help those who fall through the cracks. Th Charity of individuals, nonprofits and private companies that realize investing in helping people will help their brand. Think of all the money that is wasted in todays system. Its not a lack of money,its how its badly spent and all the red tape in between. Much more efficient to let individuals manage it than a burocracy based on forced taxation which leads to a lack of accountability as poor performance still gets funding.

axg11 4y ago

I expect this won't be the last acquisition on the health front. All tech-adjacent companies are cheap right now and Amazon is making a big push into health (Amazon Care & Pharmacy). More of these acquisitions can accelerate plans. As a bonus, One Medical already runs on AWS.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago

This means two things: 1) Worse health care 2) Medicare for All is dead in the U.S.

ch4s3 4y ago
What about this acquisition makes you say that?

adregan 4y ago

Probably too late, but is there a way to prevent my one medical records from going to Amazon?

adregan 4y ago
Follow up: Called one medical support, and it doesn’t look like there is any data deletion process. Apparently, the heath record will be held for 7 years and the best I can do is delete my account. Hoping a process will soon form but this seems like a run around of HIPAA to me. All you need is enough money to buy a company and you get a lot of juicy health data.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  In theory, under HIPAA, your protected health information (PHI) can't just be given to everybody at Amazon. One Medical can only share it for specific, generally pretty legitimate reasons. HIPAA is pretty strict, and Amazon will be under a lot of scrutiny, so I, personally, would not be worried about them, e.g., using my PHI to try to market stuff to me, or selling it off to the highest bidders. Here are some PDF fact sheets on the uses and disclosures allowed under HIPAA: https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/exchange_health_care_ops.pdf https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/exchange_health_care... https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/exchange_treatment.pdf https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/exchange_treatment.p... The bad news is they probably don't need to do this, because they have more valuable data than this on you already. :\
  - Terretta 4y ago
    > legitimate reasons This is another term that doesn’t legally mean what people colloquially think it means.
- pc86 4y ago
  For the record this isn't just a OM thing. There is no provision whereby you can request that your valid, correct medical data be deleted. 7 years is a pretty common timeframe to hold on to stuff in a "just in case" sense, after which point the provider may or may not delete it. Larger providers have a ton of this data and delete it the second they can - when I worked in healthcare software we had large clients who would run deletion scripts twice a day, literally deleting stuff that crossed the 7 year threshold a few hours ago, to keep the storage as minimal as possible. HIPAA cares much more about how you use data and who can get to it and why, than whether or not you have it in the first place (it cares about both to an extent). Calling this "a run around of HIPAA" is pretty silly, honestly.

thenerdhead 4y ago

I literally got a recruiter message about working for Amazon Healthcare and had no idea what is was. This seems like it…

__derek__ 4y ago
Amazon Care[1] launched a few years ago. [1]: https://amazon.care/ https://amazon.care/
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  It is called "Amazon HealthCare" is this different?
  - __derek__ 4y ago
    I don't know. It wouldn't be surprising if the Amazon Care product rolls up into an Amazon Healthcare organization, while it would be somewhat surprising if recruiters started working to staff a new acquisition before it was publicly announced, let alone closed.

ginko 4y ago

Can someone explain to me what value there is to allowing an online book store to use their funds gained in completely different industries to strong-arm itself into the healthcare business?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bergenty 4y ago
We’re way past the online bookstore phase.

s1mon 4y ago

This was definitely not on my Bingo card. I've been a customer of One Medical for a while. I really like the convenience and simplicity of booking in person appointments using an app on relatively short notice, and their video visits are often all you need for peace of mind or a simple prescription. I've also been a customer of Amazon for [checks order history, gulp] 24 years. I have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. I was also a customer of Whole Foods for many many years. When Amazon bought Whole Foods, it kinda stayed the same, but there are enough subtle differences that it's a bit like a Truman Show version of itself. We stopped shopping there. I hope I don't have to stop using One Medical. I'm not normally super paranoid about data privacy, but this doesn't feel good to me.

b112 4y ago
You can probably afford to pay for all medical costs, out of pocket, now that you stopped buying at Wholefoods...
- diogenescynic 4y ago
  I know it's a meme that WholeFoods is expensive, but I've actually found it pretty comparable in price to other local organic markets and co-ops. I think a decade ago it was definitely more exclusive, but now it's in the same ballpark--I actually find WholeFood's veggies, fruits, meat, and cheese are cheaper than my local co-op.
  - dmicah 4y ago
    Maybe it was just local competition, but in college a gallon of milk at Whole Foods was about $.25 cheaper than the Safeway across the street.
    - potatochup 4y ago
      Milk is a classic loss leader though. It's (intentionally) hard to compare overall prices between supermarkets
    - 4y ago

nosefrog 4y ago

Has anyone else noticed that OneMedical doesn't do full blood tests during yearly screenings anymore? My girlfriend had to beg for a vitamin d test last time she went (they said she didn't need one because she looked healthy, and when she got her results it said she was low on vitamin d), and last time I went they only screened me for cholesterol because I told them I wasn't vegan anymore and that I've developed a taco bell habit.

ajaimk 4y ago
Every time a doctor refuses a test you asked for, you just need to ask them to provide it in writing that they refused to provide you that test. They will magically give you the test after that :-)
- pc86 4y ago
  This is even easier now that most providers are (rightfully) giving patients electronic access to their charts. I requested a blood test once, the doctor refused saying it was unnecessary, I asked that it get documented in my chart. He said fine, but didn't. When I sent a message asking that his note be updated to include that I requested the test and was told it was unnecessary, I got a call from the office... to schedule the test. If you're particularly averse to confrontation you could do the above and even skip directly asking them to document the refusal. It would probably have the same end result.
zten 4y ago
I know this is the wrong answer, because you should be expecting reasonable care from your physician, but if you're on an HDHP plan just buy the service from LabCorp and reimburse yourself. For some reason, direct-to-consumer blood work is becoming a thing.
- bergenty 4y ago
  Yeah but I’d like the doctor to interpret it for me. Especially on parameters that have dependencies.

_moof 4y ago

Hard-pressed to think of any company I'd trust less with my medical records. Maybe Google.

ctvo 4y ago
Really? Meta, Google, ByteDance, Twitter, …
- _moof 4y ago
  Ok, Meta for sure. Twitter wouldn't be awesome but I'd take them over anyone else on the list so far. Edit: Oh, and then there's Palantir, Oracle, Salesforce... you know what, how about we just keep tech out of healthcare?
  - ctvo 4y ago
    Twitter is on my list because Musk may end up owning it as a private company. I’m creeped out imagining Musk with unfettered access to medical care over a large population. Come in for a physical and leave unexpectedly pregnant because ole galaxy brain thinks we need a larger population. Or more likely, sign up and pay 100K for Full Cancer Cure and 15 years later it’s still in beta and sometimes clearing a small variant of skin cancer, but also sometimes outright killing you.
- smegsicle 4y ago
  wasn't meta originally a medical research company? pretty soon we'll see amazon rebrand as "ONE"

saulrh 4y ago

It's kind of depressing that the US economy and US healthcare industry is so fucked that it's cheaper for a megacorporation (Walmart, Amazon) to set up a private little single-payer state inside itself. That's really what this is - if you own your own doctors, you can close the payment loop, remove the entire insurance industry from the equation and all of its misaligned incentives and bureaucratic overhead. Kind of inspiring, in a way, that we're so advanced technologically and organizationally that it's in striking range for non-state actors, but also terrifying. We continue to live in the worst cyberpunk utopia.

ctvo 4y ago
> We continue to live in the worst cyberpunk utopia. I sometimes think Bezos doesn’t get into politics because he’s saving himself from a conflict of interest when he becomes president of the corpo-state of Amazonia. Oh, and he’s also not that charismatic.
drc500free 4y ago
Is this significantly different from HMOs, which have existed for at least half a century? Kaiser has been doing basically this for a while now.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Is a canoe different from a speed boat? In some ways not at all, in some quite a bit. Depends on what you're trying to explain or do with it. The fundamental similarities don't override the differences and in this case I think "it's owned by a union-busting monopolistic megacorporation that is currently redefining labor relations and probably not in a good way" is enough to make it valuable to consider it a different thing.
  - drc500free 4y ago
    Kaiser runs massive complex hospital systems, does $93B in revenue, and employs over 200,000 people. One Medical runs a handful of standalone primary care offices with bougie waiting rooms, does $250M in revenue, and employs 3,000 people. It's something to keep an eye on, but if there's a canoe in this analogy it's the one Amazon just bought. Maybe they can turn it into a full navy one day.

nikolay 4y ago

I was trying to become a One Medical customer for months. Their defunct signup process (at least in Orange County) pushed me away. Hopefully Amazon puts their technology where it must be in 2022!

smiddereens 4y ago

avanai 4y ago

From a medical provider friend who works at One Medical: “I won't wear a tracking device and see 40 patients while wearing a catheter”

siliconc0w 4y ago

+1s that One Medical has gone down hill. Latest issue was getting charged like $300 for a 5 minute video appointment which quickly concluded that I should schedule an in-person if the symptom persisted. This was coded to my insurance as a 30 minute 'medium to high complexity' patient interaction.

felipellrocha 4y ago

I do not need amazon to have my medical records. I guess it’s time to cancel that subscription.

vyrotek 4y ago

If this goes like their acquisition of PillPack it will be trainwreck behind the scenes when they try to push the Amazon way of doing things onto them.

kelnos 4y ago

I've been pretty happy with OM (member since 2014 or 2015 or so), but would only consider staying with them under Amazon if someone with some healthcare-related legal expertise could come up with a plain-English explanation of what Amazon will and will not be allowed to do with my medical data. If it's pretty much status quo, and Amazon won't be able to do anything with it (like recommend products based on my medical history, ugh), then I'll probably stick with OM. Otherwise... no, thank you.

nikolay 4y ago

For years, One Medical didn't figure out that a child has more than one parents and that there could be more than one child in a family! How can a medical establishment with claims to fame not get such simple concepts - 1+ parents with 0+ children! This is the same with many other companies such as Facebook, Google, etc. Only Microsoft gets it! Even Amazon sucks with their "family" plan. Recently, Instacart did the same idiotic "family" plan killing the shared cart concept along the way! When will product managers finally be people representing much of the population?!

geoffcline 4y ago

> I wonder if this continues and Google lets Amazon employees on premises to collect medical information about their employees This is a misunderstanding of the acquisition, and how OneMedical operates. OneMedical (1Life Healthcare) is a tech company that makes the OneMedical app. They also make electronic health record and clinic management software. You can visit health clinics branded as "OneMedical" without being a member. You just can't use the app. OneMedical Clinics use the platform, but are (generally, it's complicated) privately owned by a physicians group. In Austin, the OneMedical medical staff are associated with Ascension Seton Physicians Group (may have a slightly different name). They aren't Amazon employees. The medical staff isn't accountable to Amazon leadership/shareholders. They are accountable to other medical professionals. This is similar to law firms. Side note: this is one reason why innovating in these fields is very challenging. This is the same for Amazon Care. The practicing medical professionals are not employees of Amazon. It is possible that the clinics embedded in Google locations may discontinue licensing/using the OneMedical branding. They may also transition to using another platform, such as EpicCare, to coordinate patient records, scheduling, and Telehealth.

mynameisvlad 4y ago
In Seattle, they’re part of Swedish, one of the major health providers in the area. The doctors are part of the Swedish staff directory and the insurance billing is done from their physician account.

Dowwie 4y ago

The innovative business model of the American healthcare system today consists of a physician's office scheduling patients to see the doctor but getting nurse practitioners instead, yet charging for the physician's services. Doesn't seem legal, and isn't the care that patients have signed up for.