Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan End Health-Care Venture Haven -- Update
05 January 2021 - 07:03AM
Dow Jones News
By Sebastian Herrera and Kimberly Chin
A high-profile health-care venture launched by three of the
world's biggest and best-known companies -- Amazon.com Inc.,
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- is folding
two years after its founding, the company said Monday.
Haven Health, originally sparked by an idea from JPMorgan Chief
Executive Jamie Dimon, sought to reduce health-care costs for
hundreds of thousands of workers at the three companies by pooling
resources and technology. Haven's stated aim at its 2018 launch was
to provide transparent health care for employees of the companies
at lower costs.
It plans to cease operations in February without having achieved
those aims.
"The Haven team made good progress exploring a wide range of
health-care solutions, as well as piloting new ways to make primary
care easier to access, insurance benefits simpler to understand and
easier to use and prescription drugs more affordable," a
spokeswoman said. The three companies will be able to use what they
learned and collaborate informally in the future, she said.
Writer and physician Atul Gawande was named Haven's chief
executive, but he stepped down in May. Turnover at the joint
venture was a problem almost from its outset, according to people
familiar with the matter. Other executive departures besides Dr.
Gawande included technology chief Serkan Kutan and operating chief
Jack Stoddard.
Haven sought to develop new ways to improve access to primary
care, simplify insurance coverage and make prescription drugs more
affordable, the company said.
Amazon, which has more than 800,000 employees in the U.S. and
hired 400,000 over the past year, has long pursued its own
health-care ambitions and has had teams working separately on
issues that Haven tackled.
The tech giant prizes its "fast fail" culture aimed at quick
innovation and often assigns separate teams to work on similar
projects simultaneously. It typically operates as a network of
small units under one umbrella rather than with centralized
planning, according to current and former Amazon employees.
Amazon launched an online pharmacy in November that will ship
insulin, asthma inhalers and other common generic or branded
medications. The pharmacy won't sell opioids or other drugs deemed
at higher risk of theft, and customers will need prescriptions for
their medications. Amazon said it would accept most insurance and
offer discounts to Prime customers who don't have insurance. An
Amazon spokeswoman said at the time that "the same teams,
technology, and infrastructure that support PillPack by Amazon
Pharmacy have expanded to serve a wider range of customers, both in
terms of needs and numbers."
Amazon introduced its pharmacy about two years after buying
online pharmacy PillPack Inc. Previously, Amazon customers had been
directed to a separate site geared toward patients with complex,
chronic medical conditions.
In 2019, Amazon launched a virtual primary-care clinic for its
Seattle employees dubbed Amazon Care, which offers to dispatch
mobile nurses to employees' homes.
Amazon spent billions of dollars in 2020 to set up testing sites
at its warehouses to screen workers for Covid-19. The company said
late last year that it would be conducting roughly 50,000 tests
daily by November. Amazon has also lobbied the federal government
to give its front-line employees priority access to coronavirus
vaccines as the shots begin to roll out.
Write to Sebastian Herrera at Sebastian.Herrera@wsj.com and
Kimberly Chin at kimberly.chin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 04, 2021 14:48 ET (19:48 GMT)
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