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Delivering “medically tailored” meals to seriously ill people in the United States could help avoid 1.6 million hospitalizations annually and save nearly $13.6 billion per year, a new study estimates.

Tailored Meals Could Have Positive Health Impact

The idea is to distribute healthy, home-delivered meals that are customized and fully prepared to individuals living with complex, diseases, including diabetes, heart failure, end-stage renal disease, HIV, and cancer.

Often, these meals support seriously ill individuals with lower incomes and limited mobility, as well as people who regularly experience food insecurity. Programs typically deliver 10 meals per week—five lunches and five dinners—to eligible patients.

Medically tailored meals are not a covered benefit under Medicare or Medicaid, so researchers set out to estimate potential impact of extending coverage for those meals nationally. The National Institutes of Health funded the study.

The economic analysis included eligible U.S. adults enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance. It looked at the potential impact of national implementation of 10 nutritionally customized meals per week for roughly eight months each year for patients with certain conditions and activity limitations.

Data was drawn from a nationally representative survey on healthcare utilization and costs for American adults, the 2019 Medical Expenditure Survey Panel Survey, and previously published research.

At the 2019 baseline, an estimated 6.3 million U.S. adults averaging 68 years old, were eligible to receive medically tailored meals. Seven in 10 had cardiovascular diseases, 44.9 percent had diabetes and 37.2 percent had cancer.

If all eligible individuals received these meals, an estimated 1.59 million hospitalizations and $38.7 billion in healthcare expenditures could potentially be averted in a single year, the researchers said.

The findings appeared in JAMA Network Open.

What are Medically Tailored Meals?

According to the Food is Medicine Coalition, medically tailored meals are meals approved by a Registered Dietician Nutritionist (RDN) that reflect appropriate dietary therapy based on evidence-based practice guidelines. Diet/meals are recommended by a RDN based on a nutritional assessment and referral by a health care provider to address a medical diagnosis, symptoms, allergies, medication management, and side effects to ensure the best possible nutrition-related health outcomes.

Medically tailored meals help the “sickest of the sick” or the five percent of patients that generate 50 percent of healthcare costs.

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