Amazon Pilots In-House Clinics for Seattle Employees

We first told you in February that Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase were banding together to use then-unspecified means to put the brakes on high healthcare spending among their collective million-plus workers. They even hired a CEO for the joint healthcare project, still without any public acknowledgment of their plans. The picture is coming into clearer focus today, though, as Amazon is hatching a plan to establish urgent care-like clinics for on-site employees, starting with a pilot program in its Seattle headquarters early next year. It will start with a handful of physicians, available to treat a subset of employees, then expand gradually throughout 2019, according to a report from CNBC. Amazon had looked at outsourcing in-house health services, but after hearing proposals from several vendors opted to follow in the footsteps of Apple, which started a standalone healthcare subsidiary called AC Wellness Network to provide care for employees at their job sites. That initiative has already brought 40 employees on board.