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  Today in Health it, the story is Amazon Care signs new companies to their service. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current. I. And Engaged Health Lyrics is my company. I provide executive coaching, advisory and board participation for health leaders around technology and it, if you wanna learn more, check out health lyrics.com.

Alright, here's today's story, but before we get to today's story, short, follow up to yesterday, some perceived yesterday's podcast as an epic bash, and that was not my intention. I'm not really backing off of what I said. But that wasn't my intention. I'm already on the record as saying that Judy and Epic have done more for healthcare providers than any other company on the planet before they got going.

The failure rate in EHR implementations was embarrassing, even dangerous. Uh, no one in healthcare listens to their clients and responds better than Epic across all product sets. No, CEO e is more connected to their customers than Judy, and we are a thousand percent better off because they exist in healthcare.

All that being said, there's no free pass on this topic. I think this will impact the future of healthcare more than any other topic out there that's patient directed, interoperability. And you know, from my perspective, epic, especially Epic is someone with I. A significant amount of influence in the industry, and they're held to a higher standard.

They're a leader in the industry and with great power comes great responsibility as we learned in the first Spider-Man movie and maybe some other historical references out there. And I do hold Epic to a higher standard. I. They should be leading in this area, and that is my expectation. I do recognize that I didn't come down on Athena Health or Allscripts, so let me go ahead and say right now, I expect them to participate as well.

This is good for patients and I expect the leadership of all EHR companies to recognize that. Recognize that it doesn't prohibit their efforts, but because of its potential. Good. It must be. Supported. Alright, enough for yesterday. Let's get to today's story. Today's story comes from the Wall Street Journal.

The service begins with a chatbot that allows for a virtual visit with a health professional if needed, a mobile medic will visit a user within 60 minutes. Wow. The medic is capable of conducting routine tests such as strep throat, giving vaccinations, or even taking blood samples. Prescriptions can be delivered to the person's address within two hours.

Mr. Parviz said it's quite different from anything we've had in the past, and I think we can all agree that is quite different than anything we've had in the past. Amazon is expanding the digital component of the service to all 50 states this summer. And plans to bring the full service to Baltimore and Washington, DC area.

Soon the company wants to expand to the full service over time. He said reaching that scale will require thousands of employees. The services offered as an add-on service to employer healthcare plans and Amazon plans to announce new companies that have signed up later in the summer. All right. Let's go down a little further in the article.

The success of Amazon's expansion into healthcare is still to be determined. Remote care industry executives have said that the company could get buy-in for its telehealth program from other corporations that already use Amazon web services. Amazon hasn't revealed what it is charging. For the service, but it could gain traction based on low cost.

And if companies believe remote care can significantly reduce the workforce healthcare cost, industry executives say, I would go one step further and say, this is the perfect time for this. I mean, we, we are looking at a potential retention challenge across our employee base. We're looking for additional benefits to really differentiate our organization.

This is one of those types of benefits. Alright. The company has seen the perils of highly regulated and it goes on to talk about. Haven, JP Morgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway, and how they've been humbled, and Mr. Parvez actually closes the article. With that. We have to approach this with a sense of humility.

We know that there's a lot that we do not know, but also with a sense of optimism, we do intend to do something good. All right, that's the story. Let me give you my so what, and as you know, at the end of these stories, I try to do a so what? Why does this matter? Amazon is coming, but you already know that.

That's like no duh consulting telling you that Amazon's on their way. A Teladoc in UnitedHealthcare is more of a threat to current healthcare providers than Amazon right now. More on that next week, we have a a story and an interview with the Teladoc CEO, which I think reveals a lot about where they're going and what they're doing, but I think that's a bigger threat today.

I mean, they have stepped in between the . Patient and the provider, and they are redirecting some services today, so that's more of a threat today. So we have that going on today and we have Amazon to look forward to. But Amazon's biggest leg up on anyone else is their ability to bridge the digital and physical world.

With unmatched logistics, if you wonder why there's a fixation on them in healthcare, it's because no other company in history can match that capability. Not Apple, not Google, not Microsoft or UPS or FedEx. The only two that are really even close are CVS and Walmart. Turning a really cool app into an onsite visit and meds within 24 hours is unparalleled, and that's why we keep an eye on this because it has the chance to really change how we experience healthcare.

That's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Apple, Google Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher. You get the picture. We are. Everywhere. We wanna thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders, VMware Hillrom, Starbridge Advisors, McAfee and Aruba Networks.

Thanks for listening. That's all for now.