“Elderly patients used to take cooking classes and do puzzles at Iora Health clinics, which also paid for taxi rides so they wouldn’t miss appointments,” Caroline O’Donovan writes over at The Washington Post. “The late-night phone calls, free transportation and ability to text with clinical staff helped pull Deborah Wood of Kennesaw, Ga., out of a spiraling health crisis, she said. But since Amazon bought Iora parent company One Medical and rebranded it as One Medical Seniors, appointments have gotten shorter, clinical staff have lost their jobs and some of the unique offerings have disappeared, patients and former employees told The Washington Post in interviews. The changes for senior patients like Wood highlight Amazon’s recent effort to consolidate its telehealth, pharmacy and primary-care services following its $3 billion acquisition of One Medical in 2022. Earlier this month, Amazon laid off hundreds of employees across Amazon Pharmacy and One Medical and announced a corporate restructuring. Current and former employees say the move reignited concerns that the e-commerce giant would start prioritizing profits over patients. ‘Having a [doctor] who can coordinate your health care and is willing to do so on a personal basis was very important to me,’ said Wood, 69. ‘And I really feel like that is completely gone, and I feel like it happened overnight.’ One Medical CEO Trent Green said the company remains ‘independent of Amazon leadership’ and any changes are unrelated to the acquisition. Amazon has long had health-care ambitions, but it has struggled to make them a reality. … Recently, it spun up virtual and in-home health clinic Amazon Care, which it hoped to sell as a workplace benefit, but shut it down in 2022 as it struggled to attract customers. Amazon built its empire in part through big acquisitions. It is also known for its frugality, a core principle that dictates that employees ‘accomplish more with less.’ When buying companies, Amazon has historically looked for good deals, and allowed its acquisition targets to operate independently while it observes and gathers data. Only then does it gradually begin molding those companies, like it did with Whole Foods and the gaming platform Twitch.” Caroline O’Donovan, “Changes at Amazon-owned health services cause alarm among patients, employees,” The Washington Post.
