Amazon has decided to shut down its telehealth service, Amazon Care, after Dec. 31 — Amazon Health Services lead Neil Lindsay announced in a company email. The tech giant decided to make the move after determining it wasn’t “the right long-term solution for our enterprise customers,” Lindsay wrote in the memo.
“This decision wasn’t made lightly and only became clear after many months of careful consideration,” Lindsay said. “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.”
Even though the service is ending, the company has reportedly gained a deeper understanding of “what’s needed long-term to deliver meaningful health care solutions for enterprise and individual customers” through its rollout of Amazon Care, Lindsay wrote in the memo.
Amazon Care was launched in 2019 as a pilot program for employees in and around the company’s Seattle headquarters. The service provides virtual urgent care visits, as well as free telehealth consults and in-home visits for a fee from nurses for testing and vaccinations.
In February, the company rolled out Amazon Care’s virtual offerings nationwide for its employees and other companies, signaling it had greater ambitions for the service.
It is unclear how much traction Amazon Care had gained, though we do know of a few corporate customers — including Hilton, Silicon Labs, TrueBlue and Whole Foods, the company-owned upscale grocer.
Chances are some of the work of Amazon Care will be taken over by One Medical, which Amazon acquired last month.