Research
Adherence
Medically tailored meals (MTM) for high-need patients with complex medical conditions reduce overall healthcare costs and hospital admissions.
If you have a complex chronic condition and struggle to prepare healthy meals, ask your doctor about medically tailored meal programs. These are often covered by insurance for high-risk patients and can significantly reduce hospital visits and costs.
ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
receipt of medically tailored meals was associated with a 16% net reduction in overall healthcare costs, 49% fewer inpatient hospital admissions, and 72% fewer admissions into skilled nursing facilities compared with the control group.
Why this rating
Based on retrospective cohort studies and instrumental variable analyses, which are robust but not RCTs.
Source
Food is medicine: actions to integrate food and nutrition into healthcare
Sarah Downer et al. · BMJ · 2020
DOI 10.1136/bmj.m2482
narrative_reviewCited 412×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Integration of food and nutrition into healthcare systems requires sustainable funding, clinician education, and rigorous research to be effective and scalable.Good
- Medically tailored groceries (MTG) and produce prescriptions improve diet quality and clinical markers (like HbA1c) in patients with diet-related chronic conditions.Moderate
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