Jul
03

Food Is Medicine and Food As Medicine: FA Likes It Both Ways!

We were pleased to see this report from the Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation of the Harvard Law School. Food Is Medicine: Opportunities in Public and Private Health Care for Supporting Nutritional Counseling and Medically Tailored, Home-Delivered Meals discusses the significance of nutrition for patients with acute and chronic illnesses. The report also offers suggestions for how providers of medically tailored nutrition intervention services can work with public and private insurance systems. The authors note that “people with acute and chronic illnesses often have difficulty obtaining and preparing adequate food. Malnourished patients are twice as likely to be readmitted to a hospital within 15 days of discharge and have a much higher risk of death than patients who are well-nourished.”

Read More

Mar
26

NFU Says Local Foods Important to Healthcare

DeBor observed that the new federal Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act has strengthened the long standing IRS “community benefit” requirement that nonprofit hospitals must meet to justify their nonprofit status. This includes a mandate to perform a “community needs assessment” in collaboration with public health experts and stakeholders in local communities served by the hospital/hospital system and then to develop and implement a plan to meet the identified needs. Since obesity-related chronic disease is a widespread problem and improving food systems and access to healthful foods is now recognized as part of the solution to this problem, farmers should be among the stakeholders participating in the community needs assessment process.

Read More

Mar
09

Hospitals may be markets for healthier food to satisfy Obamacare

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Hospitals around the country should become new markets for farmers to provide healthy, often locally-produced food to comply with their legal requirements under the Affordable Care Act, a prominent health care consultant told the National Farmers Union at its annual convention here this week.

“Hospitals have to demonstrate to the Internal Revenue Service that they are investing dollars into the community that justifies their nonprofit status. This is a time to become engaged as a community advocate for food and what impact it has on the community,” said Marydale DeBor, a former Connecticut hospital executive who now runs a New Haven consulting business called Fresh Advantage.

“I am looking for opportunities for you to be the doctors to the world,” DeBor said.

Read More

COPYRIGHT FRESH ADVANTAGE 2021. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.