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Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) will shut down its telehealth service, Amazon Care, after December 31, CNBC reported, citing an internal memo.
The news comes after the e-commerce giant signed a deal to buy primary care firm One Medical (NASDAQ: ONEM) for $3.49 billion, to add brick-and-mortar doctors’ offices and push deeper into the healthcare sector.
The company decided to make the move after determining it wasn’t “the right long-term solution for our enterprise customers,” Amazon Health Services lead Neil Lindsay announced Wednesday in a company email.
“This decision wasn’t made lightly and only became clear after many months of careful consideration,” Lindsay said.
“Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting and wasn’t going to work long-term.”
Even though the service is ending, Amazon gained a deeper understanding of “what’s needed long-term to deliver meaningful health care solutions for enterprise and individual customers” through its rollout of Amazon Care, Lindsay wrote in the memo.
Amazon Care was launched in 2019 as a pilot program for employees in and around the company’s Seattle headquarters. The service provides virtual urgent care visits, free telehealth consults and in-home visits for a fee from nurses for testing and vaccinations.
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