Amazon plans to tackle healthcare costs by launching primary care clinics for its employees located in its Seattle headquarters. The company is considering to open clinics, hiring a small number of doctors for only a group of employees by the end of this year. They plan to extend it in early 2019. This effort will also improve patient-provider communication.
Apple had announced earlier this year that it was planning to launch medical clinics for its employees. Rita Numerof, president of St. Louis, Missouri-based healthcare consulting firm Numerof & Associates said employers are becoming aggressive about empowering their employees to make better health choices and this decision is part of the endeavor.
Six months back Amazon announced a partnership with JP Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway to make attempts to curb rising healthcare costs by creating solutions aiming at their employee base, which would consequently impact the U.S. healthcare at large.
But, Amazon has found out the complexity of this challenge. In April it announced that it would scrap plans to sell drugs to hospitals. This move according to experts was partly because, hospitals have rigid ways when it comes to supply chain management.