PillPack, Inc. is an American online pharmacy which is a subsidiary of

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econo ...

. It is based in

Manchester, New Hampshire Manchester is a city in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. It is the most populous city in New Hampshire. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 115,644. Manchester is, along with Nashua, one of two seats of New Ha ...

, United States. The company was founded in 2013.

History

The company was founded in 2013 by TJ Parker and Elliot Cohen. By 2014 the

IDEO IDEO () is a design and consulting firm with offices in the U.S., England, Germany, Japan, and China. It was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1991. The company's 700 staff uses a design thinking approach to design products, services, enviro ...

incubated company was licensed in 31 states and shipping medication in dosage packets with

robots "\n\n\n\n\nThe robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visi ...

handling the packaging process. Software development and management were based in

Somerville, Massachusetts Somerville ( ) is a city located directly to the northwest of Boston, and north of Cambridge, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a total population of 81,045 people. With an area o ...

, with pharmacy fulfillment operations at the Millyard complex in

, former site of the

Amoskeag Manufacturing Company The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company was a textile manufacturer which founded Manchester, New Hampshire, United States. From modest beginnings it grew throughout the 19th century into the largest cotton textile plant in the world. At its peak, Amos ...

. In April 2016, Express Scripts announced it would remove PillPack from its

pharmacy benefit manager In the United States, a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) is a third-party administrator of prescription drug programs for commercial health plans, self-insured employer plans, Medicare Part D plans, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Progra ...

network at the end of the month, saying the company had misrepresented itself as a physical pharmacy rather than mail-order. PillPack alleged that Express Scripts was simply trying to give an anti-competitive advantage to its own mail-order pharmacy. PillPack launched the website FixPharmacy.com and began a publicity campaign, urging affected customers (which represented about a third of its business) to complain to Express Scripts. Express Scripts agreed to allow PillPack to remain in its network before the suspension took effect. A March 2018 incident resulted in the 2022 conviction of one PillPack Manchester employee for raping another at his apartment after a night of drinking among co-workers to celebrate a promotion. In June 2018, Amazon.com acquired the company for a reported . In November of 2019, the company changed their branding from "PillPack, an Amazon company" to "PillPack by Amazon Pharmacy". In June 2019, the federal district court for Rhode Island ruled that former

CVS Caremark CVS Caremark (formerly Caremark Rx) (stylized as , previously CVS/caremark) is the prescription benefit management subsidiary of CVS Health, headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Company history Caremark was founded as a physician and ph ...

head John Levin violated his 18-month

non-compete agreement In contract law, a non-compete clause (often NCC), restrictive covenant, or covenant not to compete (CNC), is a clause under which one party (usually an employee) agrees not to enter into or start a similar profession or trade in competition again ...

by working at PillPack in a position responsible for insurance payment negotiations. In June 2020, PillPack announced plans to build a customer service call center in

Meridian, Idaho Meridian is a city located in Ada County in the U.S. state of Idaho. As of the 2020 census, the population of Meridian was 117,635, making it the second largest city in Idaho after Boise. Meridian is considered the state's fastest-growing city ...

, to expand upon its existing call center in

Salt Lake City, Utah Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

. In December 2021, Parker and Cohen were removed from Amazon Pharmacy management. Parker was replaced in the reporting chain by Amazon Alexa VP John Love, and Neil Lindsay, who had previously overseen Amazon Prime, was put in charge of both Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon Care. Axios described the two as being "demoted to consultants" but Amazon said it was not a demotion, and that they remain Amazon employees. In May 2022, Pillpack agreed to pay $5.79 million to the federal government and some states settle a Department of Justice lawsuit. The complaint alleged that from April 2014 to November 2019, the company sent a larger amount of insulin to Medicare and

Medicaid Medicaid in the United States is a federal and state program that helps with healthcare costs for some people with limited income and resources. Medicaid also offers benefits not normally covered by Medicare, including nursing home care and per ...

patients than allowed, then falsely reported the remaining supply those patients had in order to avoid penalties.

References

{{Amazon Amazon (company) acquisitions Pharmacies of the United States 2013 establishments in the United States Retail companies established in 2013 2018 mergers and acquisitions