These three corporate giants are adventuring into the field of healthcare. They seek to provide health coverage to over 1 million of their employees. The aim of this venture is to fight the spiraling costs of healthcare nationwide.
The companies said the venture would be “free of profit making incentives and constraints”. However, with little detailed information, how this will be achieved is still in question.
The companies announced this venture early to bring in new ideas and begin acquiring talent to deal with this issue. Hospital Administrator in Strategy and Operations at EAMC-Lanier weighs in,” Partnering with Amazon will definitely help in terms of supply chain management. Many hospitals are consolidating now a days in order to increase shared support.”
With the increased consolidation in the healthcare environment, corporations are looking for young new talent to shake up the way things are done and provide new insight into old problems. The healthcare sector will increasingly look for students coming out who are knowledgeable in a diverse range of fields.
Corporate titans have made attempts in healthcare before and come up short. Google tried implementing a persona health record but could not achieve the widespread success it envisioned.
“I personally think access to care will be cheaper and more efficient”, said Hightower,” I do feel that quality outcomes will be based on more stringent benchmarks, measured more regularly and measured in a more efficient way”.
Hightower is confident above, yet does not think the venture will be free of profit making incentives. He says,” Usually when prompted to make a profit, companies tend to follow more standards and procedures and seem to increase attention to things in a way that improves quality”.
Whether the company will achieve its goals of improving care free of profit making incentives is yet to be seen. However, this did not stop the stocks of insurers and providers from plummeting. Anticipating increased competition, investors have looked to place their money elsewhere.
These three corporations seek to cut out the middlemen and oversee the entire healthcare process to eliminate unnecessary steps.
The healthcare environment is looking to this venture for possible ideas going forward and could spurn other large corporations to follow suit should positive outcomes result. Amazon, JP Morgan, and Berkshire Hathaway hope that they could see hundreds of millions of dollars in savings.
The entire healthcare environment awaits as the provision of care could be shaken up, middlemen could be cut out, and the future of care looking differently.
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