Amazon employees at a warehouse in Alabama continue to struggle with the company for unionization.
Amazon is making its first foray into healthcare delivery, announcing on Wednesday that it will offer its Amazon Care telemedicine program to employers across the country.
Currently available to company employees in Washington State, Amazon Care is an app that virtually connects users to doctors, nurses and nurses who can provide services and treatment over the phone 24 hours a day. In the Seattle area, it is complemented with face-to-face services such as pharmacy delivery and home care services for nurses who can do blood tests and provide similar services.
On Wednesday, the technology giant announced that it will immediately expand the service to employers interested in Washington who wish to purchase the service for their employees. In the summer, Amazon Care will expand nationwide to all Amazon workers and private employers across the country who wish to join.
In the Baltimore, Washington, DC, and northern Virginia market, where Amazon is building a second headquarters that will house more than 25,000 workers, Amazon Care will include face-to-face services that are currently limited to Seattle.
“Making this available to other employers is a big step,” said Amazon Care director Kristen Helton in a telephone interview. “It is an opportunity for other forward-thinking employers to offer a service that helps provide high-quality care, convenience and peace of mind.”
Amazon launched the service 18 months ago for its Washington state employees. Helton said that users gave superior ratings and commercial customers were asking about the possibility of purchasing the service for their own employees.
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Helton said the product is designed to be a supplement or an additional benefit to the existing coverage provided by an employer.
Consumer demand for telemedicine and virtual health care exploded during the pandemic. Stephen Morgan, a professor of medicine at Virginia Tech and director of medical information at the Carilion Clinic in southwest Virginia, said that virtual visits increased from about 100 a month before the pandemic to about 800 a day over a two-week period. .
He said the research showed that telemedicine can provide quality equivalent to traditional face-to-face care, while providing services to people who would otherwise not be able to get them or would have to travel great distances to do so. .
But he said it is critical that suppliers build checks and balances to ensure that quality is not impaired.
“It is a concern that anyone who wants to do telemedicine, including Amazon, put these checks and balances into practice,” he said.
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Helton said that when users log into the Amazon Care app, they are asked some questions that serve to screen the call and forward it to a nurse, nurse or doctor, as appropriate. She said it usually takes 60 seconds or less to connect to a healthcare professional.
Health care providers are provided by Care Medical, a contractor who works with Amazon on an exclusive contract.
While Amazon launched health initiatives such as Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon Halo, a bracelet that measures vital statistics, Amazon Care will be the technology giant’s first foray into delivering healthcare services beyond its own workforce, he said. Helton.
Many employers and insurers have begun to take a more direct role in providing care to the people they cover, rather than waiting to pay claims as they arrive. They were expanding access to telemedicine before the pandemic hit, and large employers were also adding or expanding clinics in or near their workplaces.
Ensuring quick access to care can help keep patients healthy and working. It can also prevent a disease from getting worse and more expensive to treat. Employers have struggled for years to gain more control over health care costs, which increase consistently faster than wages and inflation.
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John Goodman, a senior researcher at the Independent Institute and dubbed by the media as “Father of Health Savings Accounts”, released the following statement to Fox Business:
“The biggest obstacle to getting a medical consultation in the privacy of your own home is the government. When the Covid pandemic arrived, it was illegal (by law of Congress) for doctors to charge a Medicare consultation – even by phone or email. – except under normal circumstances. Younger patients used to have access to a doctor over the phone, but visual consultations via Skype, Zoom, Facebook etc. were not allowed because they violated federal privacy standards. Fortunately, these regulations were suspended in response to a Covid- 19 ’emergency.’ But when Covid leaves, his freedom to communicate with a doctor in the same way that he communicates with lawyers, accountants and other professionals will also leave, unless Congress takes action to make these new freedoms permanent. “