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Inside Amazon's efforts to build a national telehealth business geared toward big employers

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Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters; Amazon; Skye Gould/Business Insider; Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Amazon is building a telehealth business and pitching the service to major employers including Zillow, five people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to talk to the press, told Business Insider.

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It's a part of Amazon's massive ambitions in healthcare. In November, it announced Amazon Pharmacy, a drug-delivering business in 48 states with steep discounts for Prime members.

Through Amazon Care, the $1.6 trillion shipping giant is getting into the business of actual medical services for the first time, dealing with patients, their protected health information, and their doctors.

Read more: Amazon wants to provide medical care to workers at major companies. Here's an inside look at Amazon Care.

Amazon Care started as a pilot in 2019 for just Amazon employees in Seattle, providing them with medical care at home or in person. Now, it wants to sell that service to other large companies. 

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For employers who sign on for the service, which is run in partnership with the medical group Care Medical, employees near their headquarters will get online and in-person doctor visits, Business Insider has found. Employees elsewhere will get just the virtual components.

"We do not comment on rumor or speculation," an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed response to Business Insider's request for comment and interviews. "Amazon Care is a healthcare benefit pilot for Amazon employees in the state of Washington."

Want to hear more about Amazon's healthcare ambitions? Tune in Friday at 1 p.m. ET for a chat with reporter Blake Dodge.

The idea got started in Amazon's human-resources department and in Grand Challenge, Amazon's secretive lab, signaling that Amazon Care is an important project to CEO Jeff Bezos and the rest of the leadership team.

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The goal is to lower healthcare costs internally for Amazon and externally for some of the world's most powerful companies, using telehealth to meet people where they're at with good care. But Amazon Care has a long way to go.

Subscribe to Business Insider to read the full story:

Amazon is quietly building a business to offer medical care to major companies. Here's an inside look at Amazon Care.

Are you an Amazon insider with more to share? Contact Blake Dodge via encrypted email (dodgeblake@protonmail.com) or on the encrypted messaging app Signal (1-252-241-3117).

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