Food is Medicine & Hospital Utilization Analysis
Moveable Feast and Food & Friends
The Context
Food is Medicine programs, including medically tailored meals (MTMs), use food-based interventions developed by Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDNs) to help prevent, manage, and treat diet-related diseases. Moveable Feast and Food & Friends are two organizations that provide MTMs to thousands of clients in Maryland each year. Although national data has been collected and analyzed about the benefits of MTMs, there were no state-level efforts in Maryland to capture the impact of these programs. In the summer of 2024, Moveable Feast and Food & Friends partnered with Sharp Insight to identify changes in hospital utilization before and after participating in a MTM program.
Our Approach
We centered the work around our values, specifically those of strong partnerships, equitable evaluation, and meaningful results. We partnered closely with staff from Moveable Feast and Food & Friends to make decisions about specific variables, especially the final three outcomes of interest: hospital charges, visits, and potentially avoidable utilization (PAU). Both organizations provided Sharp Insight with deidentified program data which were linked with data from the regional health information exchange, Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP), for pre- and post-program hospital utilization data.
To ensure an equity-focused approach, analyses were run for demographic subgroups of participants defined by age, race/ethnicity, income, and high utilization during the pre-program period. This allowed Sharp Insight to identify groups of people who may experience heightened benefits from MTMs.
The Result
Our analyses identified substantial reductions in inpatient hospital charges, visits, and PAU from pre- to post-service participation. This project resulted in multiple deliverables, including a combined technical report, technical reports specific to each organization’s service population, and organization-specific one-page summaries. Throughout 2025, Sharp Insight worked with Moveable Feast and Food & Friends to disseminate the findings from this project widely and to various audiences. This included presentations to funders, conference workshops with groups like the Food is Medicine Coalition, and state policymakers. The organization-specific one-page summaries for each organization can be found below.
“Working with Sharp Insight really felt like we got a head start out of the gate due to their depth of experience. They are skilled, thoughtful, and really helped us craft an evaluation that reflects the specifics of our program and was driven by our priorities.”
“Food & Friends is already seeing the benefits of being able to talk about our impact on healthcare cost savings. We’ve known for many years that we have a positive impact on individuals through providing medically tailored meals, but this evaluation shows a positive impact on health systems, at a time when those systems are under strain.”
