Amazon to acquire One Medical for $3.9 billion in a bold bet on primary care

Retail giant Amazon announced plans Thursday to acquire primary care company One Medical in a cash deal valued at $3.9 billion.

The goal of the $18 per share deal is to offer more convenient and affordable health care both in-person and virtually, the companies said. The two aim to combine One Medical’s technology and team with “Amazon’s customer obsession, history of invention, and willingness to invest in the long-term,” One Medical CEO Amir Dan Rubin said in a statement.

One Medical, which went public in January 2020, offers telehealth visits and also provides in-person care in more than a dozen locations across the country. An early purveyor of tech-enhanced health care, the company boasts online booking for appointments and text-messaging with doctors, as well as a homegrown health record software that it says is more convenient for clinicians and patients.

“Booking an appointment, waiting weeks or even months to be seen, taking time off work, driving to a clinic, finding a parking spot, waiting in the waiting room then the exam room for what is too often a rushed few minutes with a doctor, then making another trip to a pharmacy – we see lots of opportunity to both improve the quality of the experience and give people back valuable time in their days,” Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, said in a statement.

The news comes just a few months after Amazon announced plans to grow its network of brick-and-mortar clinics in 20 U.S. cities, following the expansion of its virtual care services through Amazon Care.

At the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in January, Rubin was optimistic about One Medical’s growth prospects. “We feel great about our business,” he said. “We think we’re going to be the ubiquitous default option for premier care across the United States and across all stages of life. We’ll soon be in 28 markets, reaching 40% of the population.”

Rubin will remain head of One Medical upon completion of the merger.

Primary care is just Amazon’s latest play in health care. The company acquired online pharmacy PillPack in 2018 for about $753 million and launched its own online prescription delivery service Amazon Pharmacy in 2020.

The company is also vying with big tech competitors like Google and Microsoft for cloud business, signing IT contracts with major health systems like Geisinger. It also sells its own fitness tracker, Halo, along with fitness and nutrition programs.