The big clinical news of July 21st 2022 was Amazon buying a chain of a innovative startup tech-heavy & swanky primary care clinics called “One Medical”, a hybrid of traditional primary care offices with telehealth and concierge medicine. They accept traditional insurance but patients are also ‘members’ of this chain & pay a annual membership of around $200 – Amazon prime style ! Amazon has been slowly making inroads into healthcare world with it’s purchase of PillPack and previously launching Amazon Care.
One Medical is actively hiring Docs, NPs and PAs – currently in major cities but with with their new sugar-daddy Amazon, footprints in other cities & towns will likely happen fast. This site aggregates some salary data at the company. So will Amazon break the code of solving the cluttered & expensive administrative mess that U.S. healthcare has become ? It certainly has the size, reach, cash, ambition and what medicine sorely needs – AI-assisted data-mining abilities. It could cut down costs & force the competition to get their ducks in a row. Downsides ? Healthcare data privacy concerns and possible downward salary pressure .
The clinic’s modern take geared towards the working millennial population has potential. Experience economy became a buzz-word a few years ago, explaining the phenomenon of people willing to pay a lot more for mundane stuff if the experience is amazing – like Stabucks coffee, the Apple iPhone, etc. Healthcare typically lags in business & tech innovations, but change is coming…
