CNBC previously reported that Amazon was working on an employee health clinic, and that the plans kicked off in the summer of 2018 with a few hires, including a top Seattle doctor who ran a network of health clinics.

Although the service is just for Amazon employees in Seattle today, if it succeeds in improving employee satisfaction and lowering costs, Amazon could theoretically offer it more broadly to other companies or directly to consumers. 

Amazon has a number of open roles, including product managers and designers, for Amazon Care as it looks to expand the team. Its care providers, including the physicians and nurses, are technically employed by a separate subsidiary called Oasis Medical. That provision ensures that Amazon won’t possess knowledge about its employees’ health that it’s not legally entitled to have.

Amazon isn’t the only technology company to set up its own primary care clinics for its workers. Apple has its own clinics, called AC Wellness, which are intended to provide high-quality care to employees working out of its California headquarters.

Amazon Care is just one part of Amazon’s overall health care strategy. As an employer, it is working with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway on an effort called Haven to reduce costs and bolster the quality of care for the companies’ combined 1.2 million workers. The company is also working on health initiatives within its cloud group, where it has focused on voice technology and machine learning tools; the Alexa voice assistant team; and its pharmacy division, PillPack, which the company acquired in 2018.

Rules and regulations intended to reform health care are driving private practices out of business by overconfident design.

J.D. Tuccille | August 28, 2018

Like many American physicians, my wife no longer works for herself. Under the same pressures that have forced many once-independent practices to consolidate, she was lucky enough to find a large health-care organization willing to purchase her practice and ensure continuity of care for her patients. "Is the independent doctor disappearing?" U.S. News & World Report asked earlier this summer. The answer is: yes—and to a significant extent, that's a result of deliberate policy.

Your doctors didn't jump out of business; they were pushed. And they were pushed by people way too convinced of their qualifications to redesign the world around them.

Just 33 percent of physicians "identify as independent practice owners or partners," the Physicians Foundation reported in its last last survey, conducted in 2016. That's down from 48.5 percent in 2012.

But while a majority of doctors now opt to work as employees, "most physicians, even many who are themselves employed by hospitals, do not believe hospital employment of physicians is a positive trend," the foundation reported. So, why are doctors going to work for large organizations when they seem so resistant to the idea?

Factors including "government insurance mandates and changes to health insurance design to new reporting requirements, escalating costs and the rise of urgent care clinics" feature in the U.S. News article, which also notes that "Unique for physicians are certain requirements surrounding electronic health records and new reporting requirements regarding patient visits as part of the Affordable Care Act."

"The factor cited most frequently by physicians as being least satisfying is 'regulatory/paperwork burdens' followed by 'erosion of clinical autonomy,'" the Physicians Foundation survey notes. "Medicare compliance rules and regulations alone running into the tens of thousands of pages" in addition to the miles of red tape contained in the Affordable Care Act.

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