Amazon Doubles Down on Healthcare with Signify Bid

Amazon is in the running to buy home-health services provider Signify Health, which would increase its involvement in the healthcare sector.

Signify might be sold for over $8 billion, with bids coming due around Labor Day — though a deal might happen before then, according to sources quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

One rival suitor is drug store chain CVS Health Corp., which is looking to expand its home health services, while another potential buyer is UnitedHealth. But there’s no final say on who will buy the company, which has a market value of $5 billion or so — an figure that has seen an increase since reports first surfaced of the possible acquisition.

Signify’s services use analytics and tech to provide in-home care for employers, health plans, physician groups and health systems.

Amazon has been making other deals lately, including acquiring primary care firm One Medical for $3.9 billion.

Learn the details: Amazon’s $4B Bet on One Medical Escalates Healthcare Fight With Walmart, Rivals

One Medical is a membership-based primary care practice offering on-site offices in big U.S. metro areas and a big set of telehealth offerings, which allowed Amazon to grow its Amazon Care network. It also comes as Amazon has been fighting rivals including Walmart in the quickly-expanding health sector.

Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, said that health care is “high on the list” of things that need to be reinvented.

“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,” he said.