Amazon employees in an Alabama warehouse are still fighting with the company over union.
Amazon is delivering healthcare services for the first time and announced on Wednesday that it will offer its Amazon Care program for telemedicine to employers nationwide.
Amazon Care is currently available to employees of the company in Washington state and is an app that connects users virtually with doctors, nurses and nurses who can provide services and treatment 24 hours a day. In the Seattle area, it is supplemented with personalized services such as pharmacy delivery and home visitation services of nurses who can take blood work and provide similar services.
The technology giant announced on Wednesday that it will immediately expand the service to interested employers in Washington who want to buy the service for their employees. By the summer, Amazon Care will expand nationally to all Amazon employees, and to private employers across the country who want to join.
In the Baltimore, Washington, DC and Northern Virginia markets, where Amazon is building a second headquarters that will house more than 25,000 employees, Amazon Care will include the personal services currently restricted to Seattle.
“It’s a big step to make it available to other employers,” Amazon Care director Kristen Helton said in a telephone interview. “It is an opportunity for other forward-thinking employers to offer a service that can provide high quality care, convenience and peace of mind.”
Amazon launched the service 18 months ago for its employees in Washington. According to Helton, users gave excellent reviews, and business customers ask if they can buy the service for their own workers.
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According to Helton, 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 healthcare exploded during the pandemic. Stephen Morgan, a medical professor at Virginia Tech and chief medical information officer at the Carilion Clinic in southwest Virginia, said virtual visits there increased from about 100 a month before the pandemic to about 800 a day within two weeks.
He said research has shown that telemedicine can deliver quality that is consistent with traditional personal care, while making services available to people who might not otherwise be able to get them, or requiring great distances to do so.
But he said it was critical that suppliers build in checks and balances to ensure quality did not suffer.
“It is worrying that everyone who wants to do telemedicine, including Amazon, is putting the checks and scales in place,” he said.
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Helton said that when users sign up for the Amazon Care app, they are asked some questions that serve to test the call and send it to a nurse, nurse or doctor, as appropriate. According to her, it usually takes 60 seconds or less to contact a health care professional.
The healthcare providers are provided by Care Medical, a contractor working on an exclusive contract with Amazon.
While Amazon has launched healthcare initiatives such as Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon Halo, a wristband that measures key statistics, Amazon Care will be the first technology giant to deliver healthcare services outside of its own staff, Helton said.
Many employers and insurers have begun to play a more direct role in caring for the people they cover, instead of waiting to pay claims as they enter. They expanded access to telemedicine before the pandemic, and large employers also added or expanded clinics. or near their sites.
Ensuring prompt access to care can help keep patients healthy and at work. It can also prevent a disease from getting worse and more expensive to treat. Employers have been struggling for years to gain more control over health care costs, which are rising faster than wages and inflation.
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John Goodman, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and referred to by the media as the “father of health savings accounts”, made the following statement to Fox Business:
“The biggest obstacle to getting a doctor’s consultation in the privacy of your own home is the government. When the Covid pandemic broke out, it was illegal (according to Congress law) for doctors to ask Medicare for a consultation – even by phone. or by e-mail – except in normal circumstances. Younger patients often had telephone access to a doctor, but visual consultations by Skype, Zoom, Facebook, etc., were not allowed because they violated federal privacy standards. ‘ But when Covid leaves, your freedom to communicate with a physician in the same way that you communicate with lawyers, accountants, and other professionals will also disappear unless Congress acts to make these newfound freedoms permanent. ‘