One Medical CEO Trent Green isn't sold on the term "disruption."
The primary care provider was acquired by Amazon, one of the healthcare industry's biggest disruptors, in a $3.9 billion deal in early 2023. But Green said One Medical wants to work with, not replace, traditional healthcare providers to improve care delivery. One Medical has pursued partnerships with health systems and has more in the pipeline, he said.
Related: What Amazon's layoffs mean for One Medical, pharmacy division
Founded in 2007, One Medical started as a single clinic in San Francisco. It grew rapidly into a network of about 200 clinics across more than 20 markets and a virtual care platform. It offers primary care directly to consumers and provides health services to employees at more than 8,500 companies.
The expansion hasn't come without growing pains, however. In February, Amazon announced hundreds of layoffs across One Medical and the pharmacy division. That same month, One Medical closed corporate offices in New York City, Minneapolis and St. Petersburg, Florida, and transitioned former Chief Financial Officer Bjorn Thaler to a new role focused on growth strategy.
In an interview, Green said One Medical still has its eye on expansion. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What changes are planned for the clinics this year?
Since the Amazon acquisition, we’ve continued to open offices in both existing and new metropolitan statistical areas. We are prioritizing the sustainable and intentional brick-and-mortar growth strategy in areas where we know we can add value for new and existing members. We opened 15 offices between February 2023 and February 2024, including our first offices in Connecticut. We have a new partnership with Hartford Healthcare, and we’ve opened two new offices and have a third on the way in Connecticut. We plan to open offices in a new MSA in New Jersey in partnership with Hackensack Meridian Health later this year.
We have a number of offices that are under development, and probably by the end of the year, our new office launches will be similar to what we experienced last year.
Will you close any clinics?
We have not closed any clinics in any MSAs, and we don’t envision closing any.
What types of markets are attractive?
We look at where we can add the most value by looking at MSA-specific needs and trying to meet our current members or prospective members where they are, relative to access and convenience. There’s lots of large geographies where we don’t have a physical presence, and we are biased toward the larger metropolitan service areas, but ultimately our vision is we have a nationwide offering, and One Medical is accessible to a significant percentage of the population.
We look at MSAs where there’s a health system that is interested in a partnership with One Medical, and so when we find parties that are interested, that see One Medical as an extension of their primary care offering, we’re attracted to those types of opportunities.
How did Amazon's layoffs in February affect One Medical?
We’ve been looking at opportunities as part of the broader Amazon Health Services to figure out where we have opportunities for synergy on administrative functions. For instance, we looked at opportunities across our marketing functions within Amazon Health Services, and so we did execute a reduction in force that related to areas where we perceived there to be overlap and opportunities for us to improve performance moving forward with our Amazon Health Services colleagues.
Were clinicians affected by those layoffs?
Only a handful of the thousands of primary care providers that we employed were impacted by the reduction of force.
Will there be more layoffs?
I do not foresee any additional layoffs.
What does hiring look like?
We’re actively recruiting. We continue to hire. We continue to have success. Not only is our model built on trying to be the best place to receive care, we’re trying to be the best place for providers to deliver care, and so we’re focused a lot on provider workflow optimization and improving the experience that our providers have on a day-to-day basis.
Unlike other practices that put people on a production treadmill, we have a fully salaried compensation model. It allows us to remove a lot of the key contributors to provider burnout and dissatisfaction and attract new providers to our organization.
How are the clinics staffed?
If you walk in the San Francisco clinic, which is our oldest and largest office, anywhere from five to 10 providers would be in those offices and then some laboratory support personnel. The actual office experience is really oriented around our providers. Our providers do 30-minute appointments with their patients, so we don’t use medical assistants. Providers will walk out front and greet their patient after they’ve checked in, walk them back to the office, spend 30 minutes of dedicated time with them, no interruptions, and then either walk the member back out to the waiting room or walk them to our laboratory.
Phones don’t ring in our office. We have a team of customer support specialists that are based in Phoenix. It’s a call center, so they’re available 24-7, 365 days, to our members. Most members interface with us via the app, but there are times when members will call us for one reason or another.
We also have a 24-7, 365 virtual medical team, and so when members message their provider or send in a medication renewal request or have a follow-up question, our virtual medical team helps support our in-office providers by answering our members’ questions.
How is the Amazon-One Medical collaboration different from other retailers looking to disrupt the industry?
We’re inspired by Amazon and their customer obsession. The DNA of our company and the focus and obsession of Amazon have just been a wonderful match.
If we can make it easier for people to engage with their healthcare, we know we can attribute that to a healthier and happier population. We fundamentally believe in the role that primary care can play in helping people lead happier and healthier lives. We’ve seen significant trends in growth of urgent care, and in our view, that’s a reflection of constrained access to primary care.
I shudder at that term "disruption." We’re trying to play in the broader healthcare ecosystem. We believe health systems have value in the broader healthcare ecosystem and so do payers. As opposed to disrupting, we look at what are pain points that they have and how might we be able to solve them.
