The company is in talks with Medicare Advantage carriers to offer personalized supplement options possibly by October as part of a supplemental benefit category for Medicare recipients. These recipients are already permitted to purchase multivitamins as part of the plan.
Medicare Advantage is just one example of Vous Vitamin’s outreach.
In 2023, digital platform Edenred added discounts for Vous Vitamin’s personalized vitamins to its list of benefits. Employees who sign up for Edenred’s Lifestyle Spending Accounts have access to the service at a discounted price.
Vous Vitamin said that despite these gains there are still challenges to creating partnerships in the employee benefits space.
Part of the concern is that Flexible Spending Accounts/Health Savings Accounts (FSAs/HSAs) can be condition-specific, only covering nutraceuticals such as prenatal supplements and joint health supplement glucosamine. The Internal Revenue Service’s definitions around what can be covered by these accounts restrict multivitamins and daily vitamins because they are considered general health products. A doctor can sign off on a letter of medical necessity as one solution for consumers to get FSAs/HSAs to cover supplements. However, most patients do not take advantage of this option to purchase a personalized vitamin regimen.
“We’ve had to develop mindshare around this concept that, yes, vitamins and supplements are missing from the employee benefits landscape,” said Vous Vitamin CEO Brad Helfand. “And there are different ways to plug that hole from perks programs to lifestyle account reimbursement to voluntary benefits to other models of delivering a vitamin benefit program.”
Continuing education
Getting employees on board with perks programs can be difficult without baseline supplement knowledge. Helfand said employees rarely receive education around vitamins or nutritional supplements.
“There are a lot of things that employers have dabbled in that probably have weaker or thinner evidence than vitamins,” he added. “They’re not getting any support in navigating anything personalized or targeted to them. They’re not getting mail order delivery or group savings or any analytics. So why don’t we tie together all these capabilities and talk to the industry about why there should be a category that focuses on evidence-based prevention.”
Corporate well-being programs typically cover prescription drugs but often bypass VMS products. They may also have education initiatives around food-based nutrition but not mention vitamins.
In response, Vous Vitamin established its Corporate Vitamin Access and Education Program. The program draws on more than 100 articles written for Vous Vitamin by a network of board-certified physicians who provide their expertise on supplements.
The program also shows how companies can improve employee well-being, productivity and profitability through the impact of personalized nutrition. The initiative also explains how an employee will financially save through a subscription plan as opposed to purchasing over-the-counter vitamins.
As an example, Vous Vitamin projects that a company of 250 will see a five-year savings of more than $3 million from employees taking vitamin D to improve mental and immune health and iron to decrease fatigue.
Vous Vitamin said this novel employee channel for personalized nutrition and personalized vitamins has allowed it to grow in the industry.
“I think it’s a great channel strategy for us,” Helfand said. “We’ve really gotten great market traction in the space.
