MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In Massachusetts, some people get meals delivered to their doorsteps for free as medicine prescribed by their doctors. From member station WBUR, Priyanka Dayal McCluskey reports.
PRIYANKA DAYAL MCCLUSKEY, BYLINE: Every morning, cooks begin to filter into the kitchen at a Boston nonprofit called Community Servings. They get to work chopping fresh vegetables and boiling whole-grain pasta.
DIANNA MACPHEE: First cooks are in around 5 just to get started.
MCCLUSKEY: Dianna MacPhee is executive chef here. She says some sick people need soft food. Others need less fiber. And many are watching their sugar.
MACPHEE: When we write a recipe, we base it on sodium, carbohydrates, potassium and phosphorus.
MCCLUSKEY: The food is for people who have chronic diseases and can't cook for themselves. Each meal is carefully portioned and sent to patients like Steve Honyotski. He gets a delivery every Friday morning.
STEVE HONYOTSKI: Lentil and roasted vegetables. Delicious.
MCCLUSKEY: It's a big bag full of his meals for the week.
HONYOTSKI: Chicken salad provencal. That has the chicken and the raisins and some apples.
MCCLUSKEY: The food is tailored to help Honyotski manage his diabetes and obesity. And he says it's working. He's using less insulin, he's lost weight and he's been able to avoid a knee replacement.
HONYOTSKI: Less pressure on my knees means less pain and more time to delay if ever I have to have surgery.
MCCLUSKEY: Honyotski is among more than 1,000 people in Massachusetts whose Medicaid insurance pays for these meals. A new study shows these patients need to go to the hospital less often. Kurt Hager helped lead the study. He researches nutrition policy at University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.
KURT HAGER: Because the health care costs are dramatically lower, they're offsetting the program costs of delivering food to these participants. And so we're having essentially a free program, and in many cases, even saving the state and the federal government money.
MCCLUSKEY: How much money? Hager's study looked at Massachusetts patients with heart disease who got the medically tailored meals. They needed less health care over six months, saving Medicaid an average of $10,000 each. Hager says researchers in North Carolina found similar savings.
HAGER: What is really exciting is we're seeing very close alignment of results across these two states - fewer emergency department visits, fewer hospitalizations.
MCCLUSKEY: Over the last few years, 13 states have gotten federal approval to provide meals through Medicaid. Three more would like to start. But federal officials are sending mixed messages about what happens next. On Instagram, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of Medicare and Medicaid, has said he's frustrated by a health system that is willing to pay for surgeries...
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MEHMET OZ: But not always willing to pay for the nutrition that might help prevent those outcomes in the first place. That's bothered me my whole career.
MCCLUSKEY: He's been pushing hospitals to serve more nutritious food and wants medical schools to teach more about nutrition. On the other hand, Trump administration officials scrapped a Biden era policy that encouraged states to incorporate nutrition into their Medicaid programs. They're also cutting $900 billion from Medicaid over a decade, which will force states to make tough choices about what programs they can afford.
For NPR News, I'm Priyanka Dayal McCluskey in Boston.
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MARTIN: That story comes from NPR's partnership with WBUR and KFF Health News.
(SOUNDBITE OF CODES IN THE CLOUDS' "WHERE DIRT MEETS WATER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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