Medicaid ‘food as medicine’ program improves health, reduces costs, study finds

Programs in a dozen states that offer “medically tailored meals” to Medicaid enrollees with conditions such as diabetes and heart disease have been shown to significantly improve health outcomes and reduce hospital costs, according to a new study (Source: “Medicaid meal deliveries reduce hospital visits and costs,” Stateline via Ohio Capital Journal, July 10).
 
Medically tailored meals are part of a broader category of “food is medicine” interventions that use free, healthy food to improve people’s health.
 
Massachusetts was the first state to broadly offer medically tailored meals to Medicaid recipients with diet-related diseases, so researchers with Tufts University, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and other groups focused their research on that state.
 
They found that Medicaid enrollees who received medically tailored meals had 31% fewer hospitalizations and 20% fewer emergency department visits, according to study findings published in the journal Nature. Per-person health costs declined by an average of $3,433 while participants were in the program, which offset nearly all the program’s cost to taxpayers.
 
States offering medically tailored meals include California, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington.
 
In May, HPIO released a report titled Addressing social determinants of health through Medicaid: Lessons for Ohio from other states that highlights findings from three states (Michigan, Kansas and North Carolina) that have covered housing and nutrition services through Medicaid.