Why Amazon is shutting down Amazon Care
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There was considerable turmoil across the healthcare industry when news reached Wednesday that Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) was shutting down its virtual and home care business, Amazon Care.
The Amazon Care shutdown is a failure when viewed in isolation. Amazon couldn’t completely disrupt the healthcare industry, or at least the home health sector. In fact, we weren’t ready to make Amazon Care generally available.
Who knows if Amazon Care would have been ultimately successful solely because of Amazon’s influence and nurturing.
Amazon has just decided to purchase a very valuable asset. After all, they have money and resources. And trying to disrupt the healthcare industry in that way. Their healthcare business isn’t over yet. Instead, they are just choosing to buy or build.
One Medical has nearly 200 clinics and 800,000 members and also owns Iora Health. Iora Health provides value-based care for older adults enrolled in Medicare Advantage (MA) and Alternative Payment Models.
Paddy Padmanabhan, CEO of healthcare-focused Damo Consulting, said: “Amazon’s decision to throw in the towel is a response to those who believed the healthcare business was too complicated, even for a company like Amazon. It has to prove legitimacy,” he said. Advisory body. “This raises the question of whether we can succeed in healthcare as independent primary care providers, or whether we need to be part of an integrated health system to make it work.”
Padmanabhan’s analysis is correct, but again, Amazon seems to be shifting more strategy, going all out to execute its healthcare plans, and going all out quickly.
One Medical is already a company focused on at-home care, but if Amazon acquired Signify Health (NYSE: SGFY), it would make more sense to shut down Amazon Care. Signify conducts in-home assessments and owns proprietary in-home technology and data to enable plans and providers to deliver more care at home.
UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) and CVS Health (NYSE: CVS) are also rumored to be interested in Signify. CVS Health was also reportedly a bidder in the One Medical sweepstakes.
“This whole paper that we’ve been hearing for 10 or 20 years about using data to cut costs and improve patient outcomes really relies more on data than analysis,” says Michigan. Erik Gordon, professor of business and law at the university, said. , told STAT News. “You have to guess that someone looked at the Signify data and said they have data points that we don’t have. It would be very expensive to collect that.”
Amazon was seen by some in the home healthcare industry as an existential threat. Others thought Amazon simply faced the same challenges they already faced, and that its breadth wouldn’t do much in those problem areas.
Some even believed that the entrance to the Amazon lifts all boats.After all, Amazon Care is part of the advocacy group Moving Health Home.
But Amazon will not disappear. I’m not deciding that home care isn’t worth pursuing. On the contrary, it could become deeply involved in our homes for decades to come, both through our unique technology and our unique healthcare capabilities.
“Investors will initially see this as a positive for other virtual healthcare providers,” investment bank Jefferies Group said in an analyst note. “While that may be an incremental positive, we believe Amazon will likely move its investment dollars to ONEM’s virtual care platform, and therefore view Amazon’s announcement as a pivot rather than a withdrawal, so we are somewhat conservative. I’m looking.”
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