Food insecurity adds an annual expenditure of about $52 billion, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A new partnership seeks to move the needle on this stat.
Grocery technology company Instacart and home care company DispatchHealth are collaborating to prescribe food interventions to patients, the companies announced last week. Denver-based DispatchHealth offers urgent care and recovery care in patients’ homes, while San Francisco-based Instacart Health uses Instacart’s platform to provide access to healthy food and partners with healthcare organizations for food as medicine programs. Its recent partners include Alignment Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente and Mount Sinai Solutions.
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Through the new partnership, DispatchHealth’s providers will be able to offer Instacart Fresh Funds to patients, which are digital stipends that they can use to shop for healthy food. Patients can also shop on Instacart’s virtual storefront, where there are medically-tailored shopping lists customized for DispatchHealth.
These two offerings are beneficial because they give “patients the power and dignity of choice to select the nutritious foods that work best for them based on their unique food preferences — all within DispatchHealth’s provider-recommended guidelines,” said Sarah Mastrorocco, vice president and general manager of health at Instacart, in an email.
In addition, DispatchHealth providers can send food directly to patients who need extra support through Instacart Care Carts.
“Our healthcare providers can now prescribe food interventions as easily as they do medications,” said Andrea Pearson, chief growth officer of DispatchHealth, in an email. “This partnership allows us to bridge the gap between healthcare and nutrition, ensuring that our patients receive comprehensive care that addresses their holistic well-being and helps them recover faster.”
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Instacart can deliver to more than 95% of U.S. households, including 93% of residents living in food deserts, according to Mastrorocco.
DispatchHealth chose to launch this partnership with Instacart after recognizing a need among its patients, Pearson said. Based on data from more than 1,000 DispatchHealth patients, 22% battle food insecurity. It chose Instacart as a partner because it “made it easy” to create clinician-directed menus and allows for multiple payment types, including through Health Savings Accounts, Medicare Advantage debit cards and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Food interventions can greatly improve health outcomes and costs as well. Medically-tailored meals could prevent 1.6 million hospitalizations and save $13.6 billion in healthcare costs annually.
The partnership comes at a time when both care in the home and the use of food as medicine are growing in popularity. It also represents the growing trend of whole-person care, according to Pearson.
“Healthcare discussions increasingly emphasize the importance of understanding a patient’s life outside the traditional healthcare setting,” Pearson said. “By placing high-acuity caregivers directly into patients’ homes, we create an unparalleled level of intimacy and visibility into their lives. This visibility is particularly crucial in areas like nutrition, which often gets underestimated. Poor nutrition is linked to nearly half of deaths from heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.”
Both Instacart and DispatchHealth are in crowded spaces in their respective areas. Other companies working to improve food security include Season Health and NourishedRx. Companies providing in-home care included Medically Home and MedArrive.
By partnering with Instacart, DispatchHealth ultimately aims to “positively impact the health and well-being of the communities we serve,” Pearson said. She added that the company hopes to have similar partnerships in the future that “address all the needs required to truly treat the whole person.”
“Access to healthy food is just one aspect of this,” she said. “While there are many social services organizations available to help individuals with various needs, what’s often missing is a mechanism to connect the dots.”
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