Pressure Building on Healthcare Status Quo

Amazon continues to do what the rest of the market seems unable (or unwilling) to do: challenge the status quo of the medical industrial complex.

We’ve already talked about how Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase have banded together to create a company that will first serve its employees and then provide some kind of scalable disruption to the healthcare system.

They’ve made some progress on this front, with a bunch of hires and other moves, although details are still quite scarce. This is probably due to the fact that they’re still figuring things out as they go, but also because they don’t want to show their hand to the industry they’ll be disrupting.

Now, Amazon has made a couple more bold moves in an effort to cut down on their own healthcare costs while presenting long-term solutions to healthcare at large.

When Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase are spending more than $15 billion a year on healthcare, it’s understandable as to why they’re so motivated in this sphere.

First, Amazon & Friends have hired a bunch of senior staff for its healthcare venture.

Amazon also announced that it would be opening corporate clinics to serve its employees in the Seattle area.

The Health Rosetta — of which Captiva is a part — applauds the use of these clinics as a way to streamline the healthcare experience, provide more value-based primary care and cut down on costs associated with health system-based doctors.

While corporate clinics are nothing new, we know that when Amazon gets involved, things look a little different. These corporate clinics are expected to serve as a pilot program of sorts before Amazon expands the clinics outside its employee base.

For example, Amazon Go’s store in downtown Seattle served as a prototype for a grab-and-go grocer that now is expanding to additional cities.

At the same time, Amazon is taking on the pharmaceutical market with the purchase of online prescription merchant Pill Pack earlier this summer.

Amazon could use its sheer size and bargaining power to undercut many (if not all) other pharmaceutical outlets (as they have already with over-the-counter drugs) and change the playing field for buying prescriptions.

And the purchase of Pill Pack — combined with services like Amazon Prime Now — could make prescriptions cheaper and easier than ever.

The establishment is scared. News of the Pill Pack purchase instantly reverberated through Big Pharma, with Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid all losing significant stock value.

We applaud any market-based solutions that regulate out-of-control costs in pharmaceuticals and primary care, and Amazon looks to be one of the few companies ready to act.

While we all wait to see how scalable Amazon’s plans are to the rest of us, Captiva Benefit Solutions already has cracked the code on how to provide pharmaceutical savings and value-based primary care.

Our disruptive approach to providing healthcare to midsize to large companies has saved millions of dollars while providing an overall upgraded patient experience.

Get the cost savings and innovation right now. Give Captiva a call.

Pressure Building on Healthcare Status Quo was first published on: Donnie Marcontell