Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Root Benefits can be implemented at any time, whether on or off cycle. We typically need 2–3 weeks (or 2-3 months for enterprises with over 5000 employees) after a signed MSA to prepare for onboarding.

Our core offering, the Advanced Root Cause Screening and Wellness Program, includes a comprehensive Root Cause Lab Panel, written insights and action plan from the Root doctors, full access to the Root wellness platform with educational resources and live events with our team, recipe guides, and the ability to connect with the Root Community.

Members have their Root Cause Panel labs drawn at Quest Diagnostics and receive a doctor-written action plan with their results. The panel evaluates nutrients, inflammation, energy, metabolism markers, advanced lipids, and more.

Beyond the core program, employers can choose to add coverage for:

For a customized quote, reach out here.

Yes. Getting started is simple. All we need is a CSV file with your eligible employee list, and we’ll take it from there. We’re also able to do eligibility integrations for larger enterprises.

We provide a marketing content kit so you know what to expect throughout the year. Our team uses a combination of email campaigns, mailed letters, webinars, text messages, and phone outreach to engage eligible participants based on your company’s needs.

Our goal is to handle the heavy lifting so there’s minimal administrative burden on your team.

Delivering root cause care at scale requires more than great clinicians. It requires a validated clinical model, integrated care teams, and technology infrastructure that makes it consistent and cost effective for employers.

Traditional functional medicine is often fragmented and expensive, typically delivered through small, independent practices with limited patient capacity and no standardized reporting. That makes it difficult to produce consistent outcomes or meaningfully impact employer healthcare spend.

At the same time, conventional primary care is structured around a very broad scope of practice. Physicians are expected to manage everything in short visits, which often leads to a system built around medications, referrals, and procedures. There is rarely enough time or infrastructure to address chronic conditions at their root cause.

Root was built specifically to solve this gap.

Over several years, our team of board-certified physicians and registered dietitians has developed and validated a standardized, outcomes-driven approach focused on chronic disease reversal and cost reduction. Our doctors all practiced conventional medicine before transitioning to functional medicine, allowing them to safely coordinate care, deprescribe when appropriate, and work alongside existing providers.

We also built the technology platform required to make this scalable. RootOS enables consistent lab interpretation, structured care protocols, MD and dietitian collaboration, and employer-level reporting. That infrastructure is what allows root cause care to move from boutique and expensive to scalable and cost accountable.

Most importantly, we take a nutrition-first approach. Our integrated MD + RD care teams ensure that food, lifestyle, and metabolic health are foundational. This allows us to improve biomarkers, reduce symptom burden, and lower utilization across high-cost chronic conditions.

For self-funded employers, this is critical. The majority of healthcare spend is driven by chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, autoimmune disease, and chronic pain. Root is specifically designed to reduce that spend by improving underlying health rather than managing symptoms indefinitely.

Most employer healthcare spending is driven by chronic conditions. Traditional care models focus on managing these conditions with specialist referrals, procedures, and ongoing medications. While that approach can stabilize disease, it rarely reverses it, and costs continue to compound year after year.

Root takes a different approach. We focus on identifying and addressing the underlying drivers of chronic disease, allowing many employees to improve biomarkers, reduce symptom burden, and in some cases safely reduce or eliminate medications under physician supervision.

There are three primary ways this translates into cost savings:

1. Reversal over management
 Instead of layering medications on top of symptoms, we target metabolic dysfunction, inflammation, hormone imbalance, gut health, and nutrient deficiencies. When root drivers improve, conditions such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity, chronic migraines, and autoimmune symptoms often become less severe or reversible. This reduces long-term claims and pharmacy spend.

2. Medication off-ramps
 Pharmacy costs are one of the fastest-growing expense categories for employers. Our physicians are trained in safe deprescribing and work closely with employees to reduce reliance on unnecessary or high-cost medications when clinically appropriate. Even modest reductions in specialty or long-term maintenance medications can significantly impact overall spend.

3. Stopping the specialist “bounce around”
 Employees with chronic symptoms often cycle between primary care and multiple specialists without resolution. This drives imaging, procedures, and repeated consultations. By seeing the body as interconnected systems and putting the picture together for people, we address the underlying drivers earlier and reduce unnecessary downstream utilization.

Because Root is built specifically for self-funded employers, we track engagement, biomarker improvement, and utilization trends to demonstrate measurable impact. The goal is simple: improve employee health in a way that lowers total cost of care, not just short-term utilization.

In general, we partner with employers who have at least 100 benefit-eligible employees. This allows us to deliver structured onboarding, reporting, and measurable insights.

For smaller organizations, we’re happy to offer options focused on wellness benefits rather than full cost-control strategies.

Yes! We can work with companies on fully insured plans or other coverage types by sitting alongside the plan, making Root Cause Health Benefits flexible for a variety of setups.

Yes. Root can be offered as a voluntary benefit through payroll deduction. Employers can cover part of the cost, such as 50 percent, with the rest deducted from employees’ paychecks, or offer a 100 percent employee-paid payroll deduction option.

Membership is available in the continental United States. Root members must be age 18 and up.

Root has partnered with Quest Labs. You can find a draw center location here. Choose "all other labs" when searching for a location near you.

Root test kits can be collected at home and sent to the corresponding lab with the pre-paid shipping label included. 

Root is 100% Insurance-Free. No surprise bills. No co-pays. No deductibles. No co-insurance. Yes transparency, ease and affordability of testing. Root does not accept insurance or assist with any insurance claims, but Root is FSA/HSA eligible. Members receive itemized receipts for lab costs directly after purchase for submitting to an FSA/HSA plan.

Yes - we accept both HSA and FSA cards. It is important to note that we always recommend that our members reach out to these entities directly for questions, as guidelines can vary per your administrator. 

Members can expect to receive an itemized receipt via e-mail with the order confirmation. Root does not provide a Tax ID number, medical diagnosis, or diagnostic codes. Reimbursement is not guaranteed. Please contact your FSA/HSA provider in advance to confirm terms of reimbursement

Your lab results will include opinions from our nationally leading functional medicine team. You can also find additional lab interpretation resources in the Root Community. If you have an abnormal result, you can download these results to discuss with your PCP or add a visit for a detailed lab review with a Root physician. Root doctors are board-certified and licensed MDs/DOs with expertise in both conventional and functional medicine. They excel at interpreting lab results through a functional medicine lens, focusing on what is optimal rather than just what is normal. 

First, Root is so much more than a lab tracking company. We have a clinical team of board certified MD/DOs and dietitian nutritionists who actively work 1:1 with our members via telehealth sessions and show up live every month for group events free to our members. 

Direct Communication: You can actually talk to us! Whether in the community, in add on 1:1 visits, or during monthly education sessions with our doctors, we’re here for you.

Labs Available: Root offers a blend of conventional blood draw labs and functional testing for advanced diagnostics you can do from home.

Lab Support: We don’t just leave you hanging with your labs. We provide interpretation resources to help you understand your results and opportunities every month to interact live with our team in our group sessions at no additional cost.

Community and Resources: We offer an entire community filled with helpful resources, including easy-to-digest videos on functional medicine topics, full online courses (like Limbic System Retraining & Metabolism), and meal plans.

Customized Lab Panels: Our lab panels aren’t one-size-fits-all. You can choose what makes the most sense for your situation. For example, instead of spending $500 on the same panel that everyone gets (and parts that are not relevant for you), you could simply do a $75 thyroid panel to start! Then, benefit from the opinions and resources of top doctors and dietitians.

Typically, within 2-3 weeks of completing your kit of blood draw your results will be available and 2-3 days after this, your results will have comments from the Root team visible on your dashboard.

No advanced testing availability: Primary Care and Conventional Providers do not have access to this level of advanced testing. Some of the labs they may have, but Root's catalog of functional testing far exceeds what conventional doctors are able to order. For example, a conventional stool test does not adequately evaluate the microbiome. Nutrient levels are often not offered, or if they are cost hundreds of dollars for each biomarker.

Costs guessing game: There is no way to know what your lab bill will end up being after being submitted to insurance. Most of our members who have tried this end up with bills over $2000 for the Root Cause Panel.

Functional Medicine insights: The way labs levels are evaluated through a functional medicine lens is different. We go far beyond "normal/abnormal" and explain what the results mean and how they can be optimized. Root doctors have years of experience interpreting these labs and evaluating root causes. 

Root specializes in gut health, hormone balance, autoimmune, thyroid, metabolic concerns, mental health, fertility and health optimization.

Root does not treat active cancers. If we suspect these conditions while working with Root, we will refer you to the appropriate specialist. Additionally, we do not prescribe controlled substances such as narcotics or certain classes of anxiety or ADHD medications. Our team addresses these concerns naturally and can be a complement to other care for these conditions that you currently have in place. 

It's also important to note that Root physicians are not available for same-day or acute symptoms, so we recommend seeing your Primary Care Physician or an Urgent Care for acute conditions (urinary tract infections, colds, etc). As a virtual practice, we do not replace primary care or offer routine physicals, or other insurance based orders like mammograms, etc.

All of our MD or DO physicians are board certified in family medicine or internal medicine and certified by the Institute of Functional Medicine (IFM). IFM is the only organization providing functional medicine certification with educational programs directly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the governing body for official continuing education credits for physicians. 

After certification and experience in both conventional and functional medicine, Root doctors complete our in-house Root Residency, where they learn our proprietary protocols developed and tested with thousands of Root members to assure quality and consistency of care.

Our Dietitian Nutritionists have masters level nutrition training and additional advanced training and experience in functional nutrition and also complete Root nutrition training.

Our clinical team meets every week to collaborate on cases and every month to keep up to continue to enhance our care protocols.