Cleveland Clinic is advancing its collaboration with Amazon One Medical to continue expanding primary care access in the market and learn more about the company’s digital innovations, a leader told Becker’s.
The academic health system partnered with the tech giant’s hybrid primary care chain in October 2024 to bring One Medical clinics to Northeast Ohio. The first location is scheduled to open in late October in Avon, Ohio, with another office set for Shaker Heights, Ohio, in early 2026.
“Although Amazon One Medical has a long track record of collaborating with other health systems as they’ve entered various markets, they really take an individualized approach with each one,” said James Gutierrez, MD, chief of the Cleveland Clinic Primary Care Institute. “So they really worked with us to understand the nuances of the Cleveland market, the greater northeast Ohio market, focusing on understanding what we focus on at Cleveland Clinic when we talk about delivering outstanding primary care.”
The cobranded clinics will feature a couple of physicians each and help meet increased demand for primary care, particularly when so many people have Amazon Prime memberships, Dr. Gutierrez said. Prime members can get discounted One Medical subscriptions ($99 a year or $9 monthly), while employers often offer One Medical as a benefit.
In northeast Ohio, One Medical will own and operate the offices and employ the staff but share revenue with Cleveland Clinic. The health system is contributing startup costs to launching the practices and sits on a joint operating council with One Medical.
Each organization has a project manager. Physician credentialing and contracting at Cleveland Clinic have been involved, while the health system’s IT team has connected its Epic EHR to One Medical’s proprietary health records system, with a focus on messaging between providers.
“We want to make sure that if a patient moves from an Amazon One Medical primary care doc to a specialist at Cleveland Clinic or any other Epic shop and back, there’s good communication and understanding of what’s happening to that patient in both settings for safety and continuity of care,” Dr. Gutierrez said. “We’re certainly also working to facilitate orders for specialty care, diagnostic care getting carried out, etc. Fortunately, they have some excellent IT people, as do we. That’s been one of the busiest work streams over this last year.”
“Because this effort really was endorsed and supported from the executive level of our leadership on down, we’ve had great engagement from every group or department of Cleveland Clinic that needed to deliver on this,” he added.
One Medical patients and providers in northeast Ohio are free to pursue specialty care at any health system in the area. “I think there’ll be a natural comfort level with going toward Cleveland Clinic facilities, but there’s nothing either contractually or financially that drives patients in a particular direction,” Dr. Gutierrez said.
Cleveland Clinic also hopes to learn from Amazon One Medical’s approach to virtual, particularly patient experience and digital-first care. The company offers 24/7 virtual care to members — via text or video — and online scheduling for same- and next-day in-person appointments.
At the end of the day, boosting primary care access is the focus, Dr. Gutierrez said.
“Everybody should have a primary care physician, No. 1, so there’s an easy pathway to go to quickly when there’s an issue; No. 2, to provide really excellent care for any chronic conditions that people have; and then, No. 3, to help them navigate the healthcare system, to be the quarterback in all of that,” he said.
“What we’re most excited about is this gives us another way we can continue to expand primary care in northeast Ohio, beyond our traditional Cleveland Clinic primary care practices, which we’re also continuing to grow, so there are more options and more availability for people in northeast Ohio to establish with a primary care provider. That’s the top-line driver and motivator here.”
