Amazon (Nasdaq:AMZN) is making a big expansion into healthcare, with plans to acquire primary care provider One Medical in a nearly $4 billion deal.
One Medical is a healthcare organization with a focus on digital health and inviting, convenient in-office primary care. According to its website, it has locations in 17 metro areas across the country: Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas-Fort Worth; Houston; Los Angeles; New York; Orange County, California; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; San Diego, Seattle, and San Francisco. Additional locations are coming soon to Miami and Milwaukee.
RELATED: What’s Amazon planning for One Medical?
“We think health care is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention. Booking an appointment, waiting weeks or even months to be seen, taking time off work, driving to a clinic, finding a parking spot, waiting in the waiting room then the exam room for what is too often a rushed few minutes with a doctor, then making another trip to a pharmacy—we see lots of opportunity to both improve the quality of the experience and give people back valuable time in their days,” said Neil Lindsay, SVP of Amazon Health Services.
1Life Healthcare (Nasdaq:ONEM) — the San Francisco–based administrative and managerial services company for the affiliated One Medical physician-owned professional corporations — saw the news of the planned acquisition boost its stock by nearly 70% in value by midday trading today.
Amir Dan Rubin will remain as One Medical’s CEO. Said Rubin: “There is an immense opportunity to make the health care experience more accessible, affordable, and even enjoyable for patients, providers and payers. We look forward to innovating and expanding access to quality healthcare services, together.”
Amazon has been looking to do more in the healthcare space for years, though it had a rocky start in the sector. Four years ago, it reportedly dropped plans to distribute pharmaceutical products to hospitals after it ran into difficulties persuading large hospital groups to change their purchasing process and break existing deals and relationships with distributors. Last year, Amazon shuttered a joint venture with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase that sought to transform healthcare delivery.
But the mega-retailer has carried on and scored successes, too:
- Its Amazon Web Services provides a host of AI- and cloud-based services to major medical device companies. Company officials say they’re helping medtech companies better make sense of all the healthcare data out there.
- Amazon secured FDA authorization last year to sell its own COVID-19 test over its platform. It started to eye diagnostics beyond COVID, making a hiring push to expand medical diagnostics operations.
- Early this year, Amazon said it was making its Amazon Care virtual health services available nationwide.