Project Angel Heart Partners with Health Care Providers to Deliver Meals to Patients

A recently launched program, Meals for Care Transitions, is helping Project Angel Heart capitalize on 25 years of experience as providers of medically tailored meals. The program will address a community epidemic—high rates of hospitalization and increased cost of health care for malnourished individuals—while also generating revenue for Project Angel Heart so that we can serve more neighbors in need.

Through our Meals for Care Transitions program, we are partnering with health care providers to deliver medically tailored nutrition to their patients upon discharge from the hospital or care facility.

Patients enrolled in Meals for Care Transitions will receive freshly prepared meals, customized to meet their individual needs, to support their recovery. The meals will be reimbursed by health care providers, whose investment will help them achieve better health outcomes for their patients and decreased health care costs— a win for both patients and hospitals.

The program came about as an effort to share the power of food as medicine with the health care community and to increase and diversify revenue to expand Project Angel Heart’s core home-delivered meal program. The revenue we earn from this program will go back into our charitable meals, allowing Project Angel Heart to grow and serve even more critically ill Coloradans.

The need for nutritional support for critically ill individuals is great. Many are unable to shop or cook without assistance, and one in three have difficulty affording food, medicine, or both, which can result in a lack of healthy food. Research shows that malnourished individuals have more missed doctor visits, three times longer hospital stays, three times higher inpatient costs, and are twice as likely to be rehospitalized.

At Project Angel Heart, we know that food is medicine, and that it plays an important role in patient recovery. For the last 25 years, our clients have consistently reported that receiving delicious, medically tailored meals, made with love, improves their health and quality of life— and enables them to better afford their health care, adhere to their prescribed health regimen, and remain independent at home. Health care providers want to see these same outcomes for their patients. Through the Meals for Care Transitions program, we’ll be able to help them improve quality of care and community health, while also enabling Project Angel Heart to serve more people.

Learn more about Meals for Care Transitions or contact Leslie Scotland-Stewart for additional information.