Older adults who received two weeks of home-delivered meals post-discharge were 69% less likely to be readmitted within 14 days, a Durham, N.C.-based Duke University study found.
The study, published on Sept. 19 in Journal of Hospital Medicine, analyzed data from 368 adults 60 and older who were discharged from Duke hospitals between September 2022 and April 2024. All the adults were at risk of food insecurity or malnutrition and were referred to a state-funded Meals on Wheels hospital discharge pilot program that provided two weeks of home-delivered meals.
Meal recipients also had 54% lower odds of readmission at 21 days. Two weeks post-discharge, nearly 5% of patients who received meals were readmitted, compared with roughly 13% of those who did not.
Patients who received their first meal within nine days of discharge, the median wait, had significantly lower odds of 14-day readmission than those who received no meals.
More than one-third of referrals did not result in a documented meal delivery. The pilot reimbursed providers $15 per meal, about $210 per patient for two weeks. Researchers did not conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis and could not separate the effect of the food from the social contact of delivery.
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