Duke Study Ties Post-Discharge Meal Delivery to Fewer Readmissions
Duke University researchers analyzed a North Carolina hospital discharge meal pilot and found older adults who received two weeks of home-delivered meals after a hospital stay were 69 percent less likely to be readmitted within 14 days than those referred but not served, with benefits persisting at three weeks. The pilot, funded by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2021, targeted adults 60 and older at risk of food insecurity or malnutrition and was run through the state's Division of Aging and Adult Services, Meals on Wheels of North Carolina, and the NCCARE360 referral network. Duke accounted for 96 percent of statewide referrals, partly because its service area fell outside the counties covered by North Carolina's separate Medicaid-funded Healthy Opportunities Pilot, leaving clinicians with few other options to address identified food needs. The findings, published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, raise questions about whether community meal programs and health systems have enough infrastructure to meet demand for this kind of social-needs intervention.