The Vitamin Shoppe Uses DirectPath’s Transparency

Services to Empower Health Enthusiasts to Make

Informed Health Care Decisions
CASE STUDY

Overview
The Vitamin Shoppe is a national retailer for nutritional supplements headquartered in
BACKGROUND
Secaucus, New Jersey. The company operates in 785 locations across the United States
• Has a workforce of 3,400 benefits-
and employs 3,400 benefits-eligible employees, whom The Vitamin Shoppe refers to as
eligible health enthusiasts across 785
“health enthusiasts.”
stores in the United States
Because The Vitamin Shoppe’s business is rooted in promoting and enabling healthy • The Vitamin Shoppe benefits team
lifestyles, it was important to the company that its health enthusiasts had easy access to was tasked with educating health
the resources required to make smart health care decisions—both in terms of quality care enthusiasts and coordinating benefits
and affordability. for a large, disperse workforce

Challenge DIRECTPATH BENEFITS

• Identified
savings of more than
The Vitamin Shoppe offers its health enthusiasts a robust suite of health care benefits,
including DirectPath’s Transparency services. These services give health enthusiasts $158,000 for health enthusiasts
access to an advocate who can assist them with pulling cost comparisons of health care • Achieved utilization rate of 22 percent
services, managing claims and billing issues and answering questions about coverage. for transparency services
• Enhanced awareness, knowledge
Despite The Vitamin Shoppe’s investment in health care benefits solutions, the company’s
and appreciation of benefits for
HR team experienced challenges communicating benefits information and offerings to a
health enthusiasts
nationwide, disbursed workforce. As a result, many health enthusiasts were unaware of
the resources available to them as part of the company’s benefit offerings, thus leaving • Decreased administrative burden for
many valuable services underutilized. In fact, some health enthusiasts only learned about small benefits team
DirectPath’s services when they reached out to HR with health care questions, at which
point HR would refer them to a DirectPath advocate.

To increase the ROI of its benefits investments, The Vitamin Shoppe needed a
communications plan to engage health enthusiasts and ensure they understood what
benefits they had access to and how to best utilize them. “DirectPath gives The Vitamin Shoppe
health enthusiasts nationwide a
The Vitamin Shoppe sought to:
streamlined one-stop-shop for
a. Provide additional support for the limited HR team in communicating benefits benefits questions, education, billing
to a disperse workforce, and assistance, transparency services,
b. Help health enthusiasts make better health care decisions to save money on decision support and more. With this
out-of-pocket costs support, health enthusiasts have
become better consumers who seek
DirectPath Solution
quality care at the best cost, therefore
achieving a higher standard of health
The Vitamin Shoppe’s HR team worked with DirectPath to develop a broad
communications plan that focused on reintroducing DirectPath’s Transparency services
that The Vitamin Shoppe stands for.”
and highlighting the direct value that health enthusiasts could gain from utilizing those – C A S S A N D R A P E R C I VA L
services. For instance, the plan was designed to explain how DirectPath advocates could B E N E F I T S C O N S U LTA N T
H AY S C O M PA N I E S
help with comparing prices for upcoming procedures, determining which services are
covered, ensuring health enthusiasts are properly billed, assisting with referrals and prior
authorizations, and more.

directpathhealth.com contact@directpathhealth.com @DirectPathHLTH

“DirectPath’s services have been hugely beneficial—both in terms of freeing up our limited HR team, and more importantly, giving
our health enthusiasts the expertise they need to make informed health care decisions. We constantly receive feedback from our
team about how much they appreciate the thoroughness and detail that DirectPath provides in their services. We are proud to be
able to offer our people a resource that reduces the headaches that can come with navigating health care issues and saves our
health enthusiasts thousands of dollars.”
– KEVIN DELANEY, ASSOCIATE MANAGER, BENEFITS AT THE VITAMIN SHOPPE

The plan also detailed how health enthusiasts could reach out to DirectPath with
any health care-related questions before escalating more complex questions to
ONE HEALTH ENTHUSIAST’S SAVINGS
the benefits department. The Vitamin Shoppe made sure to position DirectPath as
an extension of the HR team and the first line of defense when health enthusiasts Peter, a health enthusiast at The Vitamin
encounter health care issues. Shoppe, checked in to the hospital for an
emergency treatment. The hospital called his
Unveiled during Open Enrollment season, The Vitamin Shoppe’s communications insurance and got an approval for a 24-hour
plan execution focused on consistency and personalization. To accommodate the stay. However, Peter remained at the hospital
needs of health enthusiasts scattered among The Vitamin Shoppe locations, the for 72 hours due to ongoing medical needs.
plan was crafted to ensure all health enthusiasts had access to the same information
about DirectPath services at each store. The HR team promoted DirectPath services After his visit, the insurance carrier held Peter
across multiple communication channels, including benefits guides, internal intranet responsible for the entire bill of $32,368 for
communication, email blasts, benefits fairs and smaller benefits presentations. the three-day hospital stay, as the carrier only
had preapproved 24 hours. This occurred
Because many of The Vitamin Shoppe’s health enthusiasts are young and don’t because the hospital failed to submit Peter’s
often need to use their plans, the benefits team also made sure to contact young medical records to the carrier, which took that
health enthusiasts throughout the year, so they would remember how their benefits as an indication that the longer stay was not
worked, if and when they did require medical treatment. due to medical need.

Additionally, the communications plan extended into the onboarding process at Peter contacted a DirectPath advocate who
The Vitamin Shoppe—DirectPath services are one of the first things introduced to served as a liaison between him, the hospital
new health enthusiasts. and the insurance carrier to resolve the
issue. Through persistent coordination and
by obtaining Peter’s medical records, the
Results DirectPath advocate was able to prove the
Twenty-two percent of The Vitamin Shoppe’s health enthusiasts utilized medical necessity of the three-day stay. Once
DirectPath’s Transparency services. In comparison to the single-digit industry this was proven, Peter was only responsible
standard, this impressive utilization rate was a testament to the small HR team’s for a coinsurance payment because his
ability to create and implement a communications plan that reached health deductible was met.
enthusiasts across the country. Close to 65 percent of the service utilization
Peter paid $455 out of pocket and saved
involved seeking answers to benefits-related questions, while other participants
$31,913.
used DirectPath to inquire about network coverage, benefits eligibility, claims and
billing, among others.

Through working with DirectPath, health enthusiasts were able to save more than
$158,000 in health costs in one year. As The Vitamin Shoppe is self-insured, the
health care savings are seen directly by health enthusiasts.

Not only did DirectPath enable financial savings for health enthusiasts, but the
increased inquiries to DirectPath advocates routed hundreds of calls away from
the HR team. The two benefits managers saved an estimated 400 hours of labor
by not having to field benefits questions. In addition, The Vitamin Shoppe was able
to complete a nationwide open enrollment in just two weeks thanks to the eased
workload on the HR team.

directpathhealth.com contact@directpathhealth.com @DirectPathHLTH