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Home-Delivered Medical Meals Could Prevent Millions Of Hospitalizations A Year
- April 14, 2025
- Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter
Home-delivered meals tailored to people’s chronic illnesses can prevent hospitalizations, help folks remain healthy and save billions of dollars each year, a new study says.
In “Food Is Medicine” programs, people with conditions like diabetes, heart disease or cancer receive prepared meals that are crafted to help protect their health.
More than 14 million Americans across the country qualify to receive medically tailored meals, ranging from 1.2 million in California to 18,000 in Alaska, researchers report in the April issue of the journal Health Affairs.
A simulation model found that nationwide implementation of medically tailored meal programs could save about $32 billion in health care costs in the first year alone, researchers say.
The program would also prevent more than 3.5 million hospitalizations a year related to complications from diabetes, heart disease and cancer, researchers said.
“The most striking finding is that medically tailored meals, assuming full uptake by eligible individuals, were cost saving in 49 of 50 states, highlighting their potential to reduce both financial and health burdens,” lead researcher Shuyue Deng said in a news release. Deng is a doctoral student at the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.
The state-by-state analysis showed per-patient savings as high as $6,299 in Connecticut, $4,450 in Pennsylvania and $4,331 in Massachusetts.
Alabama was the only state where implementing medically tailored meals would not save money but even then, the program would still provide health benefits to the state’s residents, researchers said.
The model also evaluated how many patients would need to receive these meals to prevent one hospitalization.
Maryland required the fewest patients, with as few as 2.3 receiving meals to prevent one hospitalization, while Colorado required the most at 6.9 patients, results show.
“Our findings suggest that medically tailored meals are not just good medicine—they're good economics," senior researcher Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts' Friedman School, said in a news release.
Of the people considered in the simulation, nearly 90% were covered by Medicare and Medicaid. As of January, 16 states have approved or proposed Medicaid waivers to cover Food Is Medicine treatments, researchers noted.
"States are excellent incubators for health care innovation,” Mozaffarian added. “Investing in medically tailored meals could transform care for vulnerable patients in every state while creating substantial health care value."
More information
The Food Is Medicine Coalition has more on medically tailored meals.
SOURCE: Tufts University, news release, April 3, 2025
