Amazon Care is shutting down

On Aug 25, 2022

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Amazon will shutter Amazon Care, the virtual and in-home health service it initially created for its employees, by the end of this year — a surprising move given the company’s recent investment in the health-care space.

People who work at Amazon Care learned the news in a meeting on Wednesday, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements.

Amazon Care initially rolled out as an internal health-care offering for employees of Amazon, which is the country’s second-largest private employer. Today, it is available to the employees of half a dozen corporate customers including Silicon Labs, Precor, Amazon-owned Whole Foods, and Hilton, its largest partner which only signed on with Amazon Care in December.

Workers were told the service was shutting down because those customers did not see the value in the service, one of the people said. Dozens of employees will lose their jobs, with some departing as soon as October, according to the people.

Amazon spokeswoman Christina Smith confirmed the decision and shared a memo announcing it.

“This decision wasn’t made lightly and only became clear after many months of careful consideration,” said Amazon senior vice president of health Neil Lindsay in an email to staff. “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.”

In his email, Lindsay said Amazon Care employees could be placed in other jobs within Amazon, and that the company would “support employees looking for roles outside of the company.”

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. Amazon first provided the letter announcing the closure to GeekWire and Fierce Healthcare.

Amazon’s health ambitions sometimes clashed with best health practices

The decision to shutter Amazon Care is a surprise given Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s commitment to expanding Amazon’s health-care investment. It follows Amazon’s $3.9 billion acquisition of concierge health-care start-up One Medical last month, a deal that could face antitrust scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission.

Amazon Care allows patients to chat with health-care providers virtually, set up video visits and, in some locations, request a health-care provider visit their house to provide services including vaccinations and screenings for common health issues such as urinary tract infections. The convenience of the service was popular with employees.

In his 2021 letter to shareholders, Jassy named Amazon Care as an example of the “type of iterative innovation” that is “pervasive across every team at Amazon.”

Amazon Care’s human resources team learned the service was shutting down this week, according to people familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, in other departments of Amazon, HR staffers encouraged…