Amazon Care Reportedly Plans to Expand Its At-Home Care Services to 20 New Cities by End of 2022

Amazon’s (Nasdaq: AMZN) plan to become an at-home care player through Amazon Care came to fruition quickly. Unsurprisingly, the next steps are taking place at a similar pace.

Currently limited to a few areas in the U.S. — including Washington state, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore — Amazon Care is set to expand to 20 more major cities by the end of 2022, according to a Tuesday report from Business Insider.

In 2021 alone, Amazon plans to expand Care and its home care visits to Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Dallas, according to the Insider report, which cited three people familiar with the tech behemoth’s plans.

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Amazon Care’s model is based on both a virtual and physical approach, offering in-person visits from medical professionals and other digital services, which are all coordinated through an app.

Just two years ago, Amazon launched its initial Amazon Care pilot to its employees in the Seattle area. Since then, the company has been aggressively attempting to expand to the general population, even contacting large insurers to pay for their services to no avail.

As of now, Amazon Care’s clients — outside of Amazon employees — remain limited. The only one that has been named is Precor, which is a fitness equipment company based in Washington state.

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The cities that Amazon is now targeting in 2022 reportedly include Atlanta, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and St. Louis, as well as Kansas City, Missouri, San Jose, California and Nashville, Tennessee.

Currently, there are about 40,000 people enrolled in Amazon Care, according to the Insider report.

As a flagship member of the Moving Health Home coalition — which vies for favorable legislation for home-based care on Capitol Hill — it’s clear that Amazon sees immense value in taking care of people in their own homes.

“It seems to me that health care is traditionally seen as a pyramid — you have primary care at the bottom and then you have specialists, hospitals, intensive care and brain surgeons at the top,” Robin Gaster, an Amazon expert, told Home Health Care News in May. “But Amazon is working right at the bottom of that pyramid, in the basement and in the foundation. Amazon is going to eat health care from below. And I think home health care is absolutely central to that.”

Outside of its own at-home care capabilities, Amazon is already working with other home-based care providers, business development executive Amanda Goltz said during MATTER’s recent “Healthcare 2040: Changing Care Delivery Models” virtual event.

Specifically, it partnered with the Wilmington, Delaware-based ChristianaCare — a hospital system with a home health division — to build out technology to help aid the at-home care experience.

“We built a comprehensive skill on Alexa that helps each of those seniors access their care plan, simply by saying, ‘Alexa, ask Home Health Coach what I’m supposed to do today,’” Goltz said during the event. “Everyday this skill changes dynamically based on what the information in the EHR says about that patient’s instructions for their care plan.”

Eventually, Amazon Care’s plan is to be in all 50 states. Once 20 more major cities are penetrated, that goal won’t be too far fetched.

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