Medically Tailored Meals as a Prescription for Treatment of Food-Insecure Type 2 Diabetics

Abstract

Rabaut LJ. Medically tailored meals as a prescription for treatment of food-insecure type 2 diabetics. J

Link between redemption of a medical food pantry voucher and reduced hospital readmissions

“…Previous studies have used the Vital Hunger Signs, a two-question food insecurity screening, and demonstrated validity and sensitivity within clinical settings. ( Rabaut, 2019 )…”

“…Poor nutrition can be approximated by an individual’s level of food insecurity ( Leung and Tester, 2019 Oct , Puddephatt et al, 2020 ). Defined as limited access to healthful, quality food, food insecure individuals “… [lack] enough food for an active, healthy life.” ( Security, 2020 ) Food insecurity has been associated with poor health outcomes, higher health care costs, and frequent use of the healthcare system ( Rabaut, 2019 ). These frequent users, known as “super users,” are particularly expensive for the healthcare system due to their unmet social needs and costly treatment of health conditions ( Phipps et al, 2016 ).…”

“…Evidence suggests that MTMs improve diet, strengthen medical treatment adherence, increase quality of life, and reduce healthcare costs for both diabetic and HIV positive patient populations ( Rabaut, 2019 , Palar et al, 2017 , Berkowitz et al, 2018 ). The use of pre-prepared meals reduces the burden of food preparation as well as transportation.…”

Implementing a Community-Based Initiative to Improve Nutritional Intake among Home-Delivered Meal Recipients

“…Despite the value of these phone calls, such RDN services provided to HDM recipients are not currently billable or reimbursable. Given that access to higher-quality, nutritious meals is associated with improved health outcomes [ 51 , 52 ], the RDN services provided through this referral program have great potential to minimize the risk of health decline among the vulnerable HDM population. This point is particularly important as healthcare payers (e.g., Medicare) shift to value-based payment models, where providers, such as clinicians and hospitals, are reimbursed according to their patients’ health outcomes and face financial penalties if particular quality metrics (e.g., hospital readmission rates) are not met [ 53 , 54 ].…”

Suffering in Silence: Is Gastroparesis Underdiagnosed?

“…1 Rabaut proposes homedelivered medically tailored meals for type 2 diabetics who are food insecure (ie, "food as medicine"). 2 And the focus of this editor's message is diabetic gastroparesis, a topic comprehensively reviewed in this issue by a United Kingdom-based authorship group led by gastroenterologist, and JPCRR editor, Adam Farmer. 3 In introducing their review, Farmer and colleagues comment on the problem of underrecognition of gastroparesis in the diabetic population and the fact that hospitalizations for this entity have been increasing.…”