To our One Medical community,

The Washington Post recently ran a story misrepresenting the intentions and results of a recent decision to create centralized support for our One Medical Seniors offices. While we respect this publication and always welcome inspection, this story grossly mischaracterizes the dedication we have to our patients and care teams. The wellbeing of our patients is our top priority, and every decision we make is in service of our long-term goal to make it easier for people to get access to high-quality health care.

This reporting is egregiously misleading and incomplete, and it is a clear attempt to discredit One Medical’s efforts to improve the health care experience in an industry where 81% of people are dissatisfied with their experience. We hold ourselves to an incredibly high bar, and it’s unreasonable to claim that our efforts, which have improved responsiveness to our patients and enhanced availability of care, have caused harm. Further, in an industry prone to preserving the status quo, we take pride in our efforts to make what should be easy (like contacting our team at any time), truly easy.

While the Amazon acquisition has brought increased attention and resources to our business, our patient care decisions have and will continue to be made by One Medical clinical and operational leadership, with quality of care and positive health outcomes being our number one focus. Amazon is not requiring One Medical to change quality or safety standards in any way, aside from inspiring us to raise the bar even further on our patient and provider experience through Amazon’s customer-obsessed culture. We, the original One Medical leadership, own what is working and what we can and should do better in the care delivery experience.

We want to share the facts behind our recent decision to centralize phone support for One Medical Seniors patients, an initiative we started prior to and independent of the Amazon acquisition in order to increase responsiveness and access for our patients.

One Medical was founded with a mission of making quality care more affordable, accessible, and enjoyable through a blend of human-centered design, technology, and an exceptional team. In our over 15 years of experience providing exceptional levels of service and care through hybrid remote and in-person teams, we know patient responsiveness and access is foundational to effective and high-quality primary care.

Upon acquiring Iora Health (what is today One Medical Seniors) in late 2021, one of the most common complaints we heard from patients was when calling the front desk at their local office, it was often hard to reach someone to schedule an appointment, ask a follow-up question, or address a health concern, especially during hours when the office was closed or when the office was busy. Our One Medical Seniors patients rely heavily on using the phone in order to make appointments, so this issue was creating a barrier between them and access to care.

We learned from centralizing phones at our One Medical offices in 2020 that this allowed for patients to connect with a team member more quickly, and also allowed in-office teams to focus attention on the members that were in-person with them. In early 2024, we created a similar centralized phone support system for One Medical Seniors patients, making it easier and faster for patients to schedule appointments and increasing access to same and next-day care. Since making this change, we have seen a 40% increase in answered calls, 95% of all calls answered in less than 2 minutes, and 97% positive feedback from post-call surveys.

Previously, these calls were answered by administrative professionals in offices who helped with tasks like scheduling and providing directions. By centralizing this support, we’re able to help more patients, more quickly. Any time-sensitive clinical needs are routed to our Virtual Medical Team, which is staffed by certified medical professionals 24/7. Centralized Support Specialists do not provide medical care to patients.

The Washington Post inaccurately claims that we mishandled 16 patient interactions within a one-month period during which we managed nearly 200,000 One Medical patient calls and visits. On reviewing the 10 patient cases that we were able to identify, based on the information the journalist provided us, we identified two patient phone calls that could have been managed more effectively, however both patients received the care they needed in a timely fashion during in-office visits with their providers. Despite members of our team, including one of our physician leaders, spending time with this reporter to listen, understand, and research the claims, the Washington Post continues to allege we “failed on more than a dozen occasions to seek immediate attention for callers with urgent symptoms.” This is patently false. We demonstrated that eight of the claims were factually inaccurate and information provided in six of the additional claims was not specific enough to identify in patient charts, nor did they match any potential safety reports that had been escalated. We cannot confirm these are actual experiences of One Medical patients.

We are proud of our process for maintaining patient safety and of identifying opportunities for improvement. Having worked in this industry for over 25 years, I believe One Medical’s patient safety event reporting system is a best practice among health care industry standards and metrics, and we’re not stopping there. Our safety event reports are reviewed and addressed by our designated Patient Safety Team on a daily basis. Additionally, safety reports are the first topics we review in our weekly clinical and operational review meetings, as we believe that safety is the most important metric we can measure and that ensuring safety is everyone’s responsibility.

We take feedback seriously, and will relentlessly pursue continuous improvement through our disciplined approach to safety and quality care. Thank you for your trust, something we do not take lightly. We look forward to continuing to provide you with high-quality, human-centered care.

Trent Green
CEO, One Medical