Healthy Choices Made Easier: Instacart Health Expands Support for Consumers and Medicaid Nutrition Programs 

Instacart Health was created to make healthier choices easier, using our platform to provide easy access to nutritious food with clear and easy-to-digest dietary and nutrition information. We empower individuals – including health plan members – to make more informed decisions about their food and, through Instacart Health, equip healthcare organizations with tools to provide wraparound services and administer additional funds for groceries and essentials. Today, we’re proud to announce major steps that strengthen our support for both consumers and our healthcare partners.

Finding the right foods to meet unique dietary and lifestyle preferences, and health goals can feel overwhelming – especially when managing a chronic condition or feeding a household with diverse preferences. According to a recent study from the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, after cost, the most commonly reported hurdles to healthy eating included a lack of healthy options where people go shopping (57%), stores or food pantries that sell healthy foods are too far away (56%), and not knowing what foods are considered healthy (48%). By leveraging our technology and partnerships, we’re making nutritious food more accessible and affordable, and helping bridge the gap between food and health to improve outcomes. 

For Consumers: Making Nutrition Guidance and Dietary Insights More Accessible

Our new AI-powered Smart Shop technology personalizes the Instacart shopping experience and makes it easier for consumers to make informed decisions about the foods they buy. It learns unique dietary preferences and habits to surface the best products – whether for a gluten-free or vegan diet, or shopping for a baby or pet. Consumers can further refine their experience by modifying Smart Shop preferences directly in their settings, allowing them to select from 14 nutrition attributes to further inform their experience. Combined with Instacart’s 30 item-level Health Tags that offer digestible nutrition and ingredient details on approximately half a million products across the catalog, it’s easier than ever to use Instacart to find foods that align with specific dietary restrictions, food sensitivities, and health goals.

We also introduced Inspiration Pages – curated online pages that make expert nutrition advice and recommended recipes instantly shoppable. Our first Inspiration Page, launched today in collaboration with the American Diabetes Association® (ADA), provides trusted nutrition guidance and recipes to support people managing prediabetes, diabetes, and obesity. It also serves as a valuable resource for anyone looking to make healthier grocery choices with confidence.

"As part of our mission to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes as well as our aim to reduce the prevalence of obesity, it is important that we equip people with tools and resources that are accessible," said Charles "Chuck" Henderson, the ADA’s chief executive officer. "Through this collaboration with Instacart, we are making it simple for people to implement ADA’s nutrition guidelines in their everyday life which we hope will help them improve their health and enable them to thrive."

For Healthcare Partners: Enhancing our Nutrition Programming and Adding the Ability to Bill as Claims  

In addition to our consumer tools, our work with the ADA includes a new turnkey nutrition program for our healthcare partners, using Instacart Health Fresh Funds customized by the ADA to cover foods informed by their Standards of Care in Diabetes. This scalable solution helps health plans, providers, and other partners seamlessly incorporate nutritious food into chronic disease care and prevention. 

Fresh Funds are flexible grocery stipends that health organizations can offer members and patients to purchase nutritious food from local grocers on Instacart for delivery and pickup. Fresh Funds can be customized based on population health needs, allowing health plans and providers to empower members and patients to act on expert dietary guidance and access the food they need to better manage their health. Research has shown that access to nutritious food is a key component of improving health outcomes, and Fresh Funds programs have shown to drive meaningful clinical outcomes for individuals with diet-related chronic conditions.

To further scale these efforts, we will now have the ability to fully administer nutrition programs as part of Medicaid Section 1115 waivers and In Lieu of Services (ILOS) provisions across the U.S. We’ve partnered with Adonis, a leading revenue cycle technology company, to allow us to submit Fresh Funds programs as claims in states that offer these pathways for nutrition support. Fresh Funds and our consumer tools enable health plans to offer their members the best local grocer selection available online, while bringing nutrition support to more people in support of their health.

We already partner with health plans to power engaging, effective nutrition programs as part of Medicaid value-added benefits, Medicare Advantage supplemental benefits, and employer benefits, as well as with providers as part of their food as medicine and engagement programs. Now, we’re expanding our ability to support Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs) in states where 1115 waivers and ILOS provisions recognize nutritious food programs as a covered service.

Today, nearly two dozen states allow coverage for nutrition support services under Medicaid through 1115 waivers or ILOS provisions, with more states awaiting federal approval. Many of these programs enable MCOs to offer medically supportive nutritious food as a cost-effective way to manage and prevent conditions that often can require more expensive healthcare services like emergency room visits and hospital stays. With our technology and partnerships, Instacart will act as a non-traditional provider, fully administering plans’ medically supportive food programs – engaging health plan members directly and submitting claims based on each state’s and health plan’s requirements. For example, in Michigan, Instacart Health is now registered as an atypical provider in the Community Health Automated Medicaid Processing System (CHAMPS) and can be used to offer local grocery programs as part of Produce Prescription and Healthy Food Packs in partnership with health plans. 

A Future Where Food is Part of Healthcare

We have a unique opportunity to redefine how Americans access nutritious food to improve their health. By investing in our Health infrastructure, we’re not only simplifying the process for health plans – we’re seamlessly supporting all customers on their personalized health journeys. Through our technology and partnerships, we’re empowering people to make informed nutrition choices while working with healthcare to build a future where food is a nationwide tool for better health. 

Our suite of tools – including new nutrition insights and dietary attributes, streamlined benefit administration and the ADA Diabetes-Friendly Fresh Funds program – makes it easier for people to find and get the nutritious food they need to support their health. At the same time, our vast network of more than 100,000 stores enables health organizations to strengthen local economies by connecting patients and members to the retailers they know and trust. As we continue to expand our reach, we remain committed to making healthy choices easier for all.

For more details on our Smart Shop technology, new Health features and the ADA collaboration, click here.