Dive Brief:
- Amazon is cutting hundreds of jobs across One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy, the company confirmed on Wednesday.
- The goal of the cuts is to “realign” resources to meet the divisions’ goals, Amazon Health Services SVP Neil Lindsay said in an email to staff shared with Healthcare Dive. The company is not disclosing the number of employees or what roles are being impacted by the cuts.
- Affected employees will receive financial support and benefit continuation, as well as the opportunity to apply for new roles at Amazon, according to Lindsay. Amazon is not on a hiring freeze and will continue to hire providers and employees for One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy.
Dive Insight:
The internal memo was sent after reporting from Business Insider preempted the company’s planned announcement about job cuts.
“We typically wait to communicate about these outcomes until we can speak with the people who are directly impacted,” Lindsay told employees in the email. “This is not ideal, and I am sorry if you heard about this externally first.”
As recently as last week, CEO Andy Jassy extolled the promise of Amazon’s pharmacy and One Medical offerings to investors.
“I really like the momentum that we're seeing in our Amazon Pharmacy business — it's growing really quickly,” Jassy said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
Amazon closed its acquisition of primary care chain One Medical in February for $3.9 billion, and announced discounted One Medical memberships for Prime users in November. Jassy told investors last week that Amazon had seen a “very good take-up” of the discounted One Medical offering.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s pharmacy business has tried to expand through measures like generic drug subscriptions for Prime members and manufacturer coupons for select brand name medications. The company extended these coupons last year for pricey insulin brands and diabetes medications.
It’s Amazon’s latest round of job cuts. The company announced early last year it had cut more than 27,000 roles company-wide. Later in 2023, Amazon Pharmacy let go 80 employees, while a number of healthcare roles were dissolved when Amazon’s hybrid care offering Amazon Care shut down.
