July 21 Reuters Amazon.com Inc on Thursday agreed to buy primary care provider One Medical for 3.49 billion, expanding the ecommerce giant39;s virtual healthcare and adding brickandmortar doctors39; offices for the first time.

The allcash deal would combine two relatively small players as Amazon continues a yearslong march into U.S. healthcare, seeking to grow at a faster pace.

The online retailer first piloted virtual care visits for its own staff in Seattle in 2019 before offering services to other employers under the Amazon Care brand. It likewise bought online pharmacy PillPack in 2018, underpinning a prescription delivery and pricecomparison site it later launched.

We think healthcare is high on the list of experiences that need reinvention, said Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services.

The Seattlebased retailer has signaled its ambitions to improve and speed up care. However, a big idea akin to how Amazon has automated the role of cashiers in grocery stores has yet to emerge.

In One Medical, Amazon is acquiring a lossmaking company with 767,000 members and enterprise clients such as Airbnb Inc and Alphabet Inc39;s Google, which offer its services as a benefit to employees, according to its website and recent financial results.

Larger rival Teladoc Health Inc, by contrast, has more than 54 million paying members in the United States and double One Medical39;s quarterly revenue. News of the Amazon deal sent shares of Teladoc as well as…