Amazon is rolling out its virtual health clinic service nationwide, the corporate announced Tuesday.
The e-retailer launched the service, called Amazon Clinic, last November, touting it as a virtual platform for users to attach with health-care providers to treat common conditions like sinus infections, pimples, and migraines. Users select their condition, select a provider, then answer a transient questionnaire. Depending on where they live, users can select to attach with a clinician over video or text message.
Amazon doesn’t provide the telemedicine services itself, but as an alternative provides Amazon Clinic as a platform to attach telemedicine partners with patients. Current partners include Curai Health, Hello Alpha, SteadyMD and Wheel.
Shares of Teladoc, a provider of virtual doctor visits, fell greater than 4% on Amazon’s news.
With Tuesday’s announcement, users in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., can access Amazon Clinic via video visits. As a result of regulatory issues, message-based chat on Amazon Clinic is simply available in 34 states.
Nworah Ayogu, the chief medical officer and general manager of Amazon Clinic, told CNBC in an interview that the corporate vets the standard of every provider and their internal operations to find out “they’ve stood up as a provider group.” The e-commerce giant also makes sure the provider groups are staffed across all 50 states “to have the option to deliver care in a timely response,” Ayogu added.
Amazon Clinic doesn’t yet accept insurance, but consumers can use insurance to assist pay for medications prescribed through the service. Prescriptions may be filled at any pharmacy, including Amazon’s own online pharmacy, which handles achievement and delivery.
The corporate declined to debate what number of users have signed up to make use of Amazon Clinic.
Amazon has tried for years to crack the health-care industry with mixed success. The corporate launched its own online pharmacy in 2020, born out of its acquisition of PillPack in 2018. Amazon introduced, then shuttered, a telehealth service called Amazon Care, and closed its $3.9 billion acquisition of health-care provider OneMedical earlier this 12 months. It also teamed up with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan to launch an incubator to enhance employer health programs in 2018, then shut it down three years later.
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