Amazon Opening Health Clinics for Warehouse Workers
Amazon plans to open 20 health care clinics for its fulfillment center workers and their families, placing those operations near its logistic facilities in a pilot rolled out July 14.
The first will open in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Crossover Health, which Amazon called an expert in comprehensive primary care services, will operate the clinics. Other facilities will be located in Phoenix; Louisville, Kentucky; Detroit and the San Bernardino and Moreno Valley area of California. The clinics will have extended hours and could potentially serve some 115,000 people in all.
“If the pilot is successful, the company will look to roll out similar facilities in other cities and states,” Amazon said.
Crossover Health “is a national medical group that works with self-insured employers to connect every employee — in headquarters or in dispersed locations — to an integrated care team that delivers comprehensive primary care to the whole family,” Amazon added.
The health care provider will fully staff the clinics and provide such services as “full-spectrum acute, chronic and preventive primary care; prescription medications; vaccinations; behavioral health services; physical therapy; chiropractic care; health coaching; and care navigation to specialty referral services,” Amazon noted. “To support families, same-day pediatric services will also be available. Crossover Health’s proprietary technology platform allows patients to start nearly all of their care online and then transition to in-person care as needed.”
Amazon Fulfillment Growth
The move comes as Amazon continues to expand its delivery and logistics capabilities while also working to move past pandemic-related delivery delays and set a new date for its annual Prime Day online marketing push (itself delayed by the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak).
The retailer has also long faced criticism for the working conditions in its fulfillment centers around the world, and has taken steps such as increasing pay to address such complaints. More recently, Amazon attracted scrutiny earlier in the pandemic for firing a warehouse worker who led a strike to win more coronavirus protections for fulfillment employees.
“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,” said Darcie Henry, Amazon’s VP of human resources. “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 also recently launched a family health care program through Care.com, “which provides each of its 650,000 U.S. employees up to 10 days of subsidized emergency backup child or adult care between now and Oct. 2,” the e-commerce operator said.
Seattle-based Amazon is No. 2 on Progressive Grocer’s 2020 PG 100 list of the top food retailers in North America.
