Dive Brief:

• Satisfaction with telehealth is significantly higher among younger patients, according to a study by consumer data company JD Power. 
• Members of Generation Y, who were born between 1977 and 1994, and Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2004, report a satisfaction score of 714 out of 1,000. But Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and and 1964, and people born earlier had a significantly lower score of 671.
• The satisfaction gap between older and younger generations is widest when it comes to digital channels and appointment scheduling, which could mean older users are struggling to use telehealth providers’ digital interfaces, the study argues. 

Dive Insight:

Telehealth use soared during the COVID-19 pandemic as patients avoided healthcare facilities to avoid infection, spurred on by new regulatory flexibilities.

Though utilization has dropped from its pandemic highs, telehealth is here to stay, particularly for routine and mental healthcare, according to Christopher Lis, managing director of global healthcare intelligence at J.D. Power. 

Other research has found that telehealth visits are more frequently billed at lower level of service (LOS) codes than in-person visits, suggesting less complex care. 

Mental health visits make up a large portion of overall telehealth claim lines too, and access to virtual visits may have boosted the number of people who could receive care for common mental health disorders.

“At the same time, we are seeing some significant barriers to adoption in some populations, particularly among older patients and underserved populations who are struggling with digital channels and having challenges with access and ease of use,” Lis said in a statement.

The JD Power report, which surveyed more than 5,400 consumers who used a telehealth service at least once in the past year, found ease of use is key when it comes to satisfaction with telehealth care.

Overall satisfaction was 172 points higher when patients rated digital channels as “very easy” to use compared with “not very easy” to use. 

Patients are looking for quick and accessible options when they choose telehealth as well, according to the study, with 28% of respondents reporting convenience as a primary reason for picking virtual over in-person care and 17% citing the ability to get care fast.

Overall satisfaction with the telehealth experience is highest when it comes to the people involved in providing the care, like doctors, physician’s assistants, nurses and nurse practitioners, and whether the visit met the patient’s needs. 

Dive Brief:

• Walgreens plans to launch telehealth visits on its website later this month, as the retail pharmacy giant continues its strategic pivot to healthcare services.
• Walgreens Virtual Healthcare will offer on-demand virtual consultations with providers for common medical needs and medication prescriptions.
• Walgreens is adding direct-to-consumer virtual care because “our goal is to be the most convenient health and wellness destination, whether you’re physically in our stores or virtually in our stores,” said Tracey Brown, Walgreens’ chief customer officer and president of retail, while debuting the new offering at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas on Monday.

Dive Insight:

Patients in eligible states — California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas — will be able to access WVH on Walgreens.com starting in late October.

Walgreens is launching WVH in those states because they include almost half of the U.S. population and nearly half of Walgreens’ pharmacy customers, a spokesperson told Healthcare Dive.

Patients will be able to access a doctor or nurse practitioner via chat, along with video visits for select conditions, on their own devices. At launch, WVH clinicians will be able to treat seasonal allergies, COVID-19 or flu, erectile dysfunction, hair loss, birth control or other common health needs, the spokesperson said.

If a patient needs a medication, WVH can send that prescription to a Walgreens pharmacy or have it delivered to their home on the same day.

Most WVH chat visits will be priced at $33 out of pocket, while video visits will range from $36 to $75. That pricing is in-line with other direct-to-consumer telehealth options. At Amazon Clinic, for example, messaging-based consultations cost $35 on average, while video visits cost $75.

Walgreens is not accepting insurance at launch, but said it plans to accept insurance some time in the future.

It’s not Walgreens’ first foray into telehealth. VillageMD, the value-based medical chain majority owned by Walgreens, offers virtual care services, and Walgreens has offered telehealth dermatology since 2016.

But it is the latest healthcare initiative from Walgreens, a company in flux as it faces flagging earnings, shaky investor confidence and C-suite turnover. Along with Walgreens’ CFO and CIO, CEO Roz Brewer also recently announced plans to leave the Illinois-based retailer.

Walgreens’ board said the company would search for a replacement with “deep healthcare experience.” An early contender is reportedly Tim Wentworth, former chief executive of Cigna businesses Evernorth and Express Scripts.

Walgreens’ U.S. Healthcare segment, which includes VillageMD, at-home care provider CareCentrix and specialty pharmacy Shields Health Solutions, has boosted the company’s recent earnings. However, the division’s profit ramp has been slower than expected, management said during its third quarter earnings call in June.

Along with bolstering VillageMD through acquisitions of provider groups and divesting its stake in home infusion provider Option Care Health, Walgreens also recently announced a partnership with physician enablement startup Pearl Health to provide management services to community providers.

Dive Brief:

• The Drug Enforcement Administration and the HHS announced on Friday they will extend pandemic-era telehealth prescribing flexibilities for controlled substances through 2024.
• The temporary extension marks the second time regulators have prolonged the relaxed prescribing rules for drugs like opioid use disorder medications or stimulants for ADHD, which allow clinicians to provide the drugs virtually without first conducting an in-person evaluation.
• The rule ensures “a smooth transition for patients and practitioners that have come to rely on the availability of telemedicine for controlled medication prescriptions, as well as allowing adequate time for providers to come into compliance with any new standards or safeguards,” the DEA and the HHS wrote. The DEA will work to write new regulations by the fall of 2024.

Dive Insight:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the DEA granted exceptions to the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008 — which required most practitioners to have at least one in-person evaluation before prescribing controlled substances — to avoid lapses in care.

Those flexibilities were originally set to expire in May along with the rest of the COVID public health emergency. But the rules were extended again until November after the agency received more than 38,000 public comments on proposed rules that would have added more limitations to telehealth controlled substance prescriptions.

The agency said “a significant majority” expressed concern about the proposed rules.

In August, the DEA said it was “open” to considering a special registration that would allow physicians to prescribe some controlled substances through telemedicine.

Organizations like the American Telemedicine Association and the American Hospital Association have argued in-person requirements could limit access to care, particularly for opioid use disorders, which soared during the pandemic. Some lawmakers also pushed the agency to keep the flexibilities, saying telehealth can alleviate gaps in access and reduce disparities when combating substance abuse. 

The ATA applauded the latest extension. Kyle Zebley, senior vice president for public policy at the ATA and executive director of ATA Action, said in a statement that 2024 is “shaping up to be the Super Bowl for telehealth, with many of the telehealth flexibilities enacted during the public health emergency set to expire.”

Dive Brief:

• The group that advises Congress on Medicare policy released a new report Thursday with recommendations on telehealth, overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans and site-neutral payments across some outpatient care settings.
• The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, or MedPAC, included telehealth in the report to satisfy a mandate from Congress after virtual care surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Telehealth coverage under Medicare was limited before the public health emergency, and it was expanded to preserve access to care.
• The report found fee-for-service Medicare spending for telehealth care was $4.8 billion in 2020 and $4.1 billion in 2021, more than 30 times greater than 2019. Early findings show more telehealth use was associated with little change in quality, slightly improved access to care for some beneficiaries and slightly increased costs to Medicare.

Dive Insight: 

MedPAC noted it’s difficult to assess telehealth’s impact because available claims data is from 2021, and policymakers should continue to monitor to see how such care affects access, quality and costs in the long-term.

Though telehealth use has generally declined from its pandemic highs, virtual care still remains elevated. Quality is one major concern for the industry, especially for audio-only telehealth, as some people lack high-speed internet that makes video more accessible.

Though the CMS paid the same rate for telehealth services as in-person care during the public health emergency, MedPAC recommended switching back to the lower facility rate “as soon as practicable after the PHE.”

The commission also examined favorable selection of beneficiaries in Medicare Advantage, where private insurers receive set payments to manage Medicare plans. According to research released earlier this week from the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans could reach more than $75 billion this year as beneficiaries who leave traditional Medicare for MA have lower expenditures than those who stay.

MedPAC estimated MA beneficiaries’ spending in 2019 was about 11% lower than traditional enrollees’ spending with the same health risk scores. 

“These findings raise major concerns about the appropriateness of continuing to base MA benchmarks exclusively on Medicare FFS spending data. Those concerns are heightened as more beneficiaries enroll in MA and the share of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in FFS declines,” the commission wrote. “If the number of FFS beneficiaries in a county becomes too small, Medicare’s estimates of FFS spending for the county could become unstable, as small changes in enrollment or health service delivery can cause large shifts in average spending.”

MedPAC also recommended setting similar payment rates for some services across outpatient settings, like hospital outpatient departments, ambulatory surgical centers and freestanding physician offices.

Lawmakers have recently shown support for site-neutral payments, though hospitals generally oppose them. The American Hospital Association said MedPAC’s recommendation “would redistribute $7.5 billion in Medicare spending for certain services performed in outpatient departments and ambulatory surgical centers,” particularly harming rural hospitals.

In the report, MedPAC argued more closely aligning payments for outpatient services would impact hospitals differently and concerns about specific groups should be dealt with through targeted assistance, rather than keeping higher rates.

The pandemic drove unprecedented demand for virtual care, fueling rapid growth for Teladoc — one of the largest telehealth vendors in the U.S. The New York-based company, which brings in a majority of revenue from subscriptions paid by employers and health plans, is now hustling to prove its lasting value proposition to those buyers by enacting more care management solutions and exploring how it might leverage artificial intelligence in response to employer needs.

A number of recent deals illustrate those priorities, including reseller agreements with musculoskeletal care providers Hinge Health and Sword Health, giving Teladoc clients access to their tools on the vendor’s platform, and a partnership with Microsoft to leverage the tech giant’s AI capabilities.

Though Teladoc elected not to purchase an MSK provider, that doesn’t mean the company is eschewing acquisitions altogether. Teladoc could still look to buys to fuel growth this year and beyond as point solutions become increasingly strapped for cash, according to Kelly Bliss, president of U.S. Group Health. Bliss shared Teladoc’s strategic priorities and how the vendor is approaching AI integration in an interview on the sidelines of the HLTH conference in Las Vegas.

HEALTHCARE DIVE: Is this something your employers asked for — more MSK solutions?

KELLY BLISS: Our team has been talking to employer clients about evolving their virtual care strategy more broadly. Of our sales for the last several quarters, 75% are multi-product. Our clients are continuing to leverage our integrated whole-person strategy, but they’re also working with other vendors’ solutions.

Our clients are saying, “It would be really easy for us from an administrative burden side if you incorporated some MSK offerings into, at a minimum, the back-end administrative stuff.” And Sword and Hinge are both really strong players and quite dominant in that space, and many of our clients have them. So it was an easy decision.

Investors are saying that point solutions are increasingly seeing the value of integrating with bigger platforms. Who approached who here?

BLISS: We’ve had ongoing relationships with both Sword and Hinge. Our employer base is pretty massive, and we’ve always had inbound requests to integrate more effectively. What we’re focused on is the areas where we’re developing or expanding, whether that’s new clinical use cases or personalizing our member experience. So it makes sense for us from a commercial perspective to create an opportunity for our clients to better enable back-end administration.

People are desperately tired of point solutions. I think our clients are starting to realize the not just fractured member experience but how that impacts actual clinical outcomes, and the back office costs to standing up vendor point solution after vendor point solution. I had one client say, “I’m going schizophrenic putting new programs in place.” And now they have to justify ROI on those, and they’re starting to consolidate.

How do these referral deals fit into Teladoc’s business strategy?

BLISS: We’ve been building out more capabilities on how we refer into different systems, whether that’s a brick-and-mortar hospital system, whether that’s referral into other services like last-mile care. This is an ecosystem play. We know from our owned assets, when we pair, for example, chronic disease management with mental health, we know there’s actually improved outcomes. And it’s an opportunity for us to ease administrative burden on our clients too.

Given virtual primary care is the quarterback of care, in our view, we will continue to identify what’s the build, buy, partner strategy. The core of that strategy is clinical quality and safety to our members. Scalability — they have to be able to operate at scale, for us to really own an asset. It’s not just topline revenue growth — it’s how are you actually creating value for your client, because we’ve seen the level of sophistication with our clients shift in the last couple of years. They’re demanding meaningful outcomes, whether that’s clinical or ROI.

Teladoc historically has been fairly acquisitive. Why was MSK an area to partner and not buy?

BLISS: We’ve invested $400 million in R&D and we will continue to invest next year over $400 million in R&D. We have our own priorities. At this point, in MSK, Sword and Hinge are two very well known entities. And they’ve had those markets. So it’s just not a priority for us right now.

We will continue to be acquisitive. I don’t think our thesis around bringing in solutions that really build out our whole-person vision will stop. We’re always looking, and that will continue, and we’re lucky in that. Unlike probably anyone else [at HLTH], we are free cash flow positive with $950 million. So there’s opportunity for us as the markets start to get a little pressured.

What are your R&D priorities?

BLISS: It's AI and hyper-personalization of member experience. There’s a whole list of things — we’re not disclosing exactly what we’re investing in. But there’s a tremendous amount going into furthering our vision. There’s some I’m really excited about that are targeted at specific clients. We’ve had specific clients come to us and say, “This is what we want to tackle,” so we’re testing and learning for different lines of business there.

What are the implications of the Microsoft deal for Teladoc’s employer clients?

BLISS: It will be incorporated into all of our clinical use cases. We’ll use the Microsoft platform to more effectively document consults, which pulls out time and waste from the system. Broadly, Microsoft has these new tools called Copilots — within their AI packages, they’re ways to deploy AI for a specific use case. We’re figuring out ways in which we can deploy those with our clients.

For example, we’ve had a lot of clients come to us and ask for an ecosystem partnership. So health plan clients have their own care management team, and they’re trying to optimize their virtual care strategy with their care management team. We’ve had some really interesting meetings with some of our clients around that. That’s a great use case for AI, reducing that administrative burden for a health plan. The client reaction to the Microsoft deal has been very positive.

Where else could we see Teladoc leverage AI?

BLISS: We currently have 60 AI models running today. We’re doing more of scheduling members with a quality physician — if you can appreciate the ecosystem of requirements associated with bringing to bear an immediate response from a member inquiry, “I would like this type of visit,” with the matched client clinical resource requirements. So we’re using a lot of AI in that model. We’re using AI to do more personalization with nudges and making sure that our members are taking the next best action, and driving toward early detection and wellness.

On future use cases, there are a lot around pulling waste out, and understanding the member and how they like to interact with our system, and then deploying ways to further engage them and steer them into other clinical programs. And health history and benefits are dynamic, right? It’s constantly changing. So what’s the continuity of care if we have a virtual primary care relationship? So we’re trying to get after making sure a member or their care team is constantly served up the appropriate next actions in their care journey.

Dive Brief:

• Telehealth groups are cheering after a bipartisan group of 60 senators reintroduced the CONNECT for Health Act last week, which would make pandemic-era virtual care flexibilities permanent if passed.
• It’s the second time the bill has been reintroduced in Congress as proponents of virtual care look to solidify COVID-19 gains in telehealth accessibility and use before temporary flexibilities run out at the end of 2024.
• Companion legislation has also been introduced in the House.

Dive Insight:

Permanently expanding telemedicine access has broad bipartisan support in Congress. A number of bills have been introduced to codify more telehealth protections after COVID-19, including CONNECT, which is considered the most comprehensive virtual care legislation by advocacy groups.

Since CONNECT was first introduced in 2016, a number of the bill’s original provisions have been enacted into law or adopted as policy by the CMS, including in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as Washington threw open the doors to broader telehealth use. Then a 2022 spending package extended a number of the changes through Dec. 31, 2024, giving regulators and Congress more time to analyze telehealth efficacy in Medicare and make any desired COVID-era changes permanent.

The updated CONNECT act would permanently remove geographic restrictions on telehealth services, expand originating sites to include the home and permanently allow health centers and rural health clinics to provide telehealth. It would also remove the six-month in-person visit requirement for telemental healthcare and permanently allow telehealth restrictions to be waived during public health emergencies.

CONNECT is endorsed by more than 150 industry organizations, according to the office of Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, who led reintroduction of the bill.

Telehealth groups including Telehealth Access for America, the American Telemedicine Association and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives came out with statements applauding legislators for the bill’s reintroduction.

“Telehealth is an issue that has consistently attracted bipartisan, bicameral support and we are very encouraged at the incredibly strong Congressional show of support, to this day,” said Kyle Zebley, ATA’s head of public policy.

Proponents argue that enshrining heightened access to telehealth will preserve continuity of care while removing obstacles many patients face in accessing services, including the cost and distance of travel.

Studies suggest that older adults and people from underserved communities benefited the most from expanded telehealth access during the pandemic, and that telehealth doesn’t contribute to duplicative care, as some feared, but instead acts as a substitute. However, overall research on that is mixed, as some studies have found telehealth increases overall utilization.

Dive Brief:

• Telehealth vendor Amwell and technology firm Leidos have been awarded a contract worth up to $180 million with the Department of Defense’s Health Agency that aims to digitize the military healthcare system, the companies announced Thursday.
• Under the task order, the partners will replace the military’s telehealth product with Amwell’s Converge virtual care platform. The contract also includes some Amwell automated care programs that guide patients through treatment plans. 
• Amwell alone could capture up to $54 million from the contract over its 22-month term, TD Cowen analysts estimated based on a past DOD contract with Cerner, where the EHR vendor received 30% of the deal’s value. Amwell could also see some additional recurring maintenance revenue.

Dive Insight:

Amwell, one of the nation’s largest telehealth providers, has been steadily migrating its clients to Converge, a new platform that aims to consolidate offerings and integrate third-party tools.

About 43% of Amwell’s telehealth visits in the second quarter took place on Converge. The vendor said this summer that it expected the majority of its health provider business to be migrated by the end of this year.

The DOD contract represents a “further validation” of the Converge platform and could signal opportunities for Amwell to expand into the government market, TD Cowen analysts Charles Rhyee and Lucas Romanski wrote in a note on the deal.

The new system will start at five initial sites and then roll out to the entire enterprise in phases. The military healthcare system includes 9.6 million active duty service members, family members, retirees and health professionals.

Amwell lowered its 2023 revenue outlook during its second quarter earnings results in August after missing Wall Street expectations on revenue. It posted a net loss of $93.5 million, including a $27.3 million goodwill impairment charge to make up for the “sustained decrease” in Amwell’s stock and market capitalization, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Amwell reports third quarter earnings on Nov. 1. 

Dive Brief:

• Cigna’s health services division Evernorth has acquired the technology and clinical capabilities of asynchronous telehealth provider Bright.md for an undisclosed amount, the company announced on Tuesday at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas.
• Evernorth’s telehealth business MDLive plans to start offering asynchronous care using the new capabilities within its virtual urgent care platform in 2024, and eventually expand asynchronous care to chronic disease management and wellness visits.
• A spokesperson for the company said it was too early to share a specific timeline for the launch in virtual urgent care and the expansion to more clinical areas. Currently, more than 43 million people have access to MDLive virtual urgent care through their health plans and employers, Cigna says.

Dive Insight:

Asynchronous virtual care allows clinicians to review information, render a diagnosis and prescribe needed medication without communicating in real time with a patient.

A crop of startups, including Bright.md, Zipnosis and 98point6 — as well as nontraditional entrants like Amazon, with its telemedicine marketplace — are peddling asynchronous care tools that allow patients to triage low-acuity healthcare needs without having to rely on costlier avenues of care like an emergency department visit, or wait for a primary care appointment. 

When asynchronous care launches next year, MDLive users will be guided through a digital clinical interview that will be converted into a chart note. A clinician will review the note and provide a diagnosis or prescription, or direct the patient to a different care setting if needed, according to Cigna.

At a time when insurers are facing growing public scrutiny over their use of algorithms to review claims, Cigna’s release on the new offering says the asynchronous care experience “is not based on artifical intelligence or machine learning.”

An Evernorth spokesperson said Bright.md’s platform uses branching logic to identify and ask follow-up questions, and all decisionmaking is done by the treating clinician.

However, Bright.md in past releases has said its software uses AI to inform new questions based on information provided by the patient.

Portland, Oregon-based Bright.md was founded in 2014 as a virtual care platform for direct-to-patient telehealth. The startup, which has raised roughly $31 million to date, sells its software to health systems, including West Coast system Adventist Health, Prisma Health in South Carolina and Rush University Medical Group in Chicago.

In those deals, a clinician (normally an urgent care provider) employed by the system is used to staff asynchronous care. At Cigna, patients who take an asynchronous visit will be treated by MDLive clinicians, according to the Evernorth spokesperson.

Cigna will license Bright.md’s technology back to the company in a continuing services agreement so its health system clients can continue using the platform, the spokesperson said.

Cigna purchased MDLive in 2021 as demand for virtual care snowballed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Connecticut-based payer has expanded the telehealth provider’s capabilities as employers expressed more interest in virtual-first health plans, adding chronic condition management last year.

Dive Brief:

• Medicaid beneficiaries who began using buprenorphine, a medication that treats opioid use disorder, via telemedicine early in the COVID-19 pandemic were more likely to stay in treatment than non-telemedicine initiation, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open. 
• The study found enrollees faced the same odds of non-fatal overdose when starting buprenorphine through telehealth, suggesting virtual care can improve access to treatment — which can be a major challenge for people who struggle with the disorder. 
• The research comes as permanent regulations for telehealth prescriptions of controlled substances remain up in the air. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the HHS announced earlier this month they’ll temporarily extend the pandemic-era flexibilities through 2024. 

Dive Insight: 

Drug overdose deaths increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching more than 100,000 in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 75% of those deaths involved opioids. 

Stay-at-home orders and social distancing disrupted healthcare delivery, which might have contributed to the increase in overdose deaths, noted the JAMA study’s authors. 

In a bid to avoid lapses in care, regulators and lawmakers created new telehealth rules, like reimbursing visits at the same rate as in-person care and waiving licensing requirements for out-of-state clinicians.

The DEA also granted exceptions to the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008, which required most practitioners to have at least one in-person evaluation before prescribing controlled substances like buprenorphine.

Those prescription flexibilities were originally set to expire in May alongside the rest of the public health emergency. However, the rules were instead extended until November after regulators received more than 38,000 public comments on proposed rules that would have added more limitations to telehealth controlled substance prescriptions.

Earlier this month, the rules were temporarily extended again through the end of 2024, after organizations like the American Telemedicine Association and the American Hospital Association argued that in-person requirements could limit access to care, particularly for opioid use disorders.

The latest JAMA study, which used Medicaid data on more than 91,000 people from Kentucky and Ohio, is in line with previous research that found expanded telehealth services could improve care for people with opioid use disorder.

“This finding may be especially valuable for improving MOUD [medications for opioid use disorder] access in states such as Kentucky, which has historically had restrictive buprenorphine access policies and restrictive methadone regulations, as well as a large rural population,” the study’s authors wrote. “Telemedicine may also increase access in underserved areas, adding to the workforce for behavioral health services in rural areas.”

However, researchers did note racial disparities when it came to telehealth access and retention. Non-Hispanic Black people had lower odds of telemedicine initiation compared with White individuals, and about half the odds of being retained in buprenorphine treatment at 90 days.

Dive Brief:

• Amazon announced Tuesday it had expanded its direct-to-consumer virtual care service Amazon Clinic to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., about nine months after its launch in November.
• The clinic is available 24/7 via Amazon’s website and its mobile app and connects consumers to third-party clinicians for care for common health conditions like urinary tract infections and pink eye.
• Message-based visits are now available in 34 states, while video calls are open nationwide, according to a company blog post. 

Dive Insight:

Amazon has been steadily expanding its presence in healthcare over the past several years, though not all its ambitions have panned out. 

Amazon Clinic launched only a few months after the company confirmed it would shut down Amazon Care, another virtual care business geared toward enterprise customers. The company’s joint venture with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway aimed at lowering healthcare costs shuttered in 2021 after just three years in operation. 

But the tech and retail giant recently completed its $3.9 billion acquisition of primary care chain One Medical, and it’s been adding new features to its online pharmacy Amazon Pharmacy, like a generic drug subscription service and a tool that automatically adds manufacturer coupons for some drugs. 

Last month, the tech giant also announced an Amazon Web Services tool called HealthScribe that allows providers to build applications that use speech recognition and generative artificial intelligence to document patient visits, bringing the company into the increasingly competitive space for AI-backed clinical notetaking tools. 

Amazon pitches its latest virtual care venture as an “affordable and convenient” service for more than 30 common health conditions, including concerns like sinus infections, skin conditions, asthma and reproductive care.

Amazon Clinic contracts with telehealth companies Wheel, SteadyMD, Curai Health and Hello Alpha to power the service. Though expenses can vary depending on telehealth provider and treatment, message-based visits usually cost $35, while video consultations run $75. 

“We’re excited to bring Amazon Clinic to even more customers, and we’re working hard to make even more conditions available for treatment in the coming months,” Nworah Ayogu, chief medical officer and general manager of Amazon Clinic, wrote in a blog post. 

Amazon Clinic’s nationwide expansion was delayed after lawmakers raised concerns about patient privacy earlier this year, according to Politico.

Senators Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy asking the company how it collects and uses data from Amazon Clinic customers, after the Washington Post reported about an authorization form for “use and disclosure of protected health information.”

An Amazon spokesperson denied that there was any external reason behind the delay at the time.

On its blog post announcing the expansion, the company said it asks for a HIPAA authorization to “make things easier for customers” and ensure clinicians can “provide continuity of care.”