Amazon.com Inc. this morning announced that Amazon Care, its telehealth service, is now available throughout the U.S.

First introduced in 2019, Amazon Care enables users to schedule telehealth sessions with a doctor or a nurse through a mobile app. The service also allows users to request that a medical professional visit them at home. 

While the Amazon Care app is now available nationwide, in-home care services are currently accessible in only eight cities: Seattle, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, Arlington and Washington, D.C. 

Amazon said today that it plans to expand availability to more than 20 additional cities by year’s end. The feature will become available in, among other locations, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago and New York City. 

Amazon has had a presence in the adjacent pharmacy market for several years, partly thanks to its 2018 acquisition of PillPack Inc. for a reported $1 billion. Through Amazon Care, users can have prescriptions delivered to a nearby pharmacy or shipped through the Amazon Pharmacy service, which offers free delivery options. Amazon Care also offers a number of other features including the ability to access treatment summaries. 

Amazon doesn’t provide Amazon Care directly to consumers but rather offers the service to companies. Firms that sign up can make Amazon Care available to their workers. Amazon says its Whole Foods Market subsidiary and Silicon Laboratories Inc., a major semiconductor design firm, are among the organizations that have adopted Amazon Care so far. 

Amazon’s move to make the service available nationwide today is the culmination of a gradual rollout that began more than two years ago.

In the fall of 2019, Amazon made Amazon Care available to employees in Seattle. In March 2021, the online retail and cloud computing giant announced that it would begin offering the service to other companies in Washington state. Amazon first disclosed its plans to eventually make the service available nationwide the same month. 

“Patients are tired of a health care system that doesn’t put them first,” said Amazon Care director Kristen Helton. “Our patient-centric service is changing that, one visit at a time. We’ve brought our on-demand urgent and primary care services to patients nationwide. As we grow the service, we’ll continue to work with our customers to address their needs.”

Amazon Web Services Inc., the company’s cloud computing business, has also been growing its presence in the healthcare sector. Last July, AWS launched Amazon HealthLake, a cloud service that enables healthcare organizations to collect medical information from their internal systems in one place and use the information to improve patient care. The Amazon unit introduced an offering called AWS for Health around the same time that combines its cloud services with partner-developed solutions. 

Photo: Amazon