Amazon Opens Neighborhood Health Center

As a sign of change in medical care delivery, Amazon has opened its first health care clinic for its employees in Dallas, Texas.  According to the Amazon announcement, “Amazon expects to establish 20 health centers in five cities across the U.S., improving access and care for more than 115,000 associates and their families in Phoenix, Arizona; Louisville, Kentucky; Detroit, Michigan; the San Bernardino-Moreno Valley area in California, and the Dallas-Fort Worth location. If the pilot is successful, Amazon will look to roll out similar facilities in other cities and states.”

Amazon has partnered with Crossover Health, which according to their website, brings “people, their doctors, data, and benefits together under one Connected System of Health, partnering with health activist employers to provide care grounded in outcomes, not payment models.”  Said another way, this sounds like an integrated health care delivery system, much like Kaiser without the insurance company.  They directly contract with employers, like Amazon, to provide care to employees and dependents.

This video presentation by Dr. Eric Bricker, describes details of the new Amazon health centers. One of the very innovative characteristics of the new centers is that they will be open from 7AM to 11PM, Monday through Saturday.  As Dr. Bricker explains that expanding the hours that a person can access care has a huge impact on the ability of people to obtain medical care. Hopefully, others medical groups will follow this lead.

It is truly revolutionary to put the patient first and not the doctors.  Apparently, the doctors and medical providers are paid a salary and are not compensated on a “Fee for Service” basis where insurance companies reimburse based on each procedure performed.  This removes the financial incentives to do more to get paid more.

It will be interesting to watch the Amazon Neighborhood Health Centers as they expand throughout the country. One can imagine that, once successful, Amazon will expand this to non-Amazon employees.  That would be revolutionary.  In the meantime, if you are interested in setting up a non-fee-for-service medical insurance plan for your California employees, you can contact Benefits Cafe, 800-746-0045 and we can assist.