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Amazon will try using kiosks to deliver prescription drugs to patients at their doctors' offices.
The company's Amazon Pharmacy business plans to test the strategy by putting prescription kiosks in Los Angeles-area primary care offices operated by Amazon's One Medical business, the company announced today.
Some popular prescriptions will flow into the kiosks automatically.
A patient's doctor can also arrange to have Amazon Pharmacy send a specific prescription to an in-office kiosk, rather than sending the prescription to the patient's home or office.
Patients who have questions about their prescriptions will be able to talk to pharmacists through the kiosk or through their phones, Amazon said.
The pilot program is set to begin in December.
Amazon noted that U.S. patients fail to fill about 30% of prescriptions. The company is predicting that offering patients instant access to in-office prescription deliveries will increase the percentage of patients who fill their prescriptions and take their medications as prescribed.
CVS Health investors reacted to the announcement by pushing the price of that company's shares down to less than $75.83, from $77. 80, immediately after the news came out.
The history: CVS already offers a way for patients to get primary care and pick up prescriptions during the same visit.
The company put MinuteClinic walk-in clinics in many of its pharmacies.
Patients who use the clinics to get checkups or ask about sore throats can then walk out and fill prescriptions in full-service drug stores.
Staffing problems, decreases in insurer reimbursement levels, changes in worker location patterns and other factors have caused problems for the CVS clinics in some markets.
Amazon Pharmacy: Because Amazon is such a big, high-profile company, any major Amazon Pharmacy move makes news. But the company generates only about $1.9 billion in pharmacy revenue, according to Emergen Research.
Analysts at Bain & Co. suggested in April that Amazon Pharmacy is "struggling to reach viable economics."
"As a smaller operator, it doesn't get volume discounts," the analysts wrote.
What it means for employer plans: Amazon Pharmacy expansion and strategy experiments could eventually improve the quality of care if they lead a significant percentage of employer plan participants to take blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol medications as prescribed.
But the new strategies could hook plan participants on convenient but relatively expensive channels that end up doing little to improve the quality of care.
If problems with the new strategies lead to footprint contraction at CVS, Walgreens and Amazon Pharmacy itself, that could make the current "pharmacy desert" problem worse.
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