Amazon to open retail health clinics near fulfillment centers

Amazon is stepping into the retail clinic business with a plan to open them near their fulfillment centers and operations facilities.

According to a news release, the online retail giant announced their new Neighborhood Health Center Pilot Program in partnership with Crossover Health. The first such clinic is available to the 20,000 employees in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas.

The plan is to, through the initial phase of the program, establish 20 such clinics in five cities across the U.S. with the goal of improving access and care for the more than 115,000 Amazon employees in Phoenix, Ariz.; Louisville, Ky.; Detroit, Mich.; the San Bernadino-Moreno Valley area, Calif.; and Dallas-Fort Worth. If the pilot program succeeds Amazon will seek to expand to other cities, the release says.

"Across the U.S., an increasing number of patients do not have easy access to a primary care physician and instead utilize emergency or urgent care options, which is not only more expensive for patients, but also overlooks important preventative care opportunities," Darcie Henry, vice president of Human Resources, says in the release. "We want to solve that for our employees, and the launch of these new Neighborhood Health Centers will provide a range of quality primary care services for employees across the country—further strengthening Amazon’s industry-leading benefits program, which provides comprehensive health care for employees starting on day one of employment."

Amazon isn’t the only retailer to get into the clinic business, as Walgreens recently announced a plan to open between 500 and 700 primary care clinics co-located with their stores across the country over the next five years.