Booker, Marshall Urge CMS to Pilot Home-Delivered Medically Tailored Meals for High-Risk Medicare Patients

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) sent a letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz and Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) Director Abraham Sutton, urging CMMI to develop and test a model that evaluates the impact of providing medically tailored home-delivered meals to Medicare beneficiaries with acute and chronic diet-related illnesses.

"Congress established CMMI to test innovative payment and service-delivery models that improve care quality while reducing expenditures for the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Medically tailored meals (MTMs) are an ideal candidate therapy for achieving this mission," the Senators wrote.

"MTMs are designed by dietitians to treat a patient's diet-impacted illness, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, cancer, or AIDs, with a focus on individuals at high risk due to comorbidities, disability, or other characteristics that predict high risk of hospitalization or care utilization. Recent evidence shows that MTMs can reduce hospital stays, improve health outcomes, and lower overall health care costs in Medicaid and other payer settings," the Senators wrote. One analysis projected that nationwide implementation for eligible patients could avert 2.6 million hospitalizations and save $23.7 billion in one year, even after accounting for program costs.

"We respectfully ask that CMS consider this opportunity as it evaluates future Innovation Center models. An MTM program offers a targeted, time-limited intervention for high-risk beneficiaries whose unmanaged conditions increase health care spending. If successful, this approach could provide a scalable, cost-effective tool to improve outcomes and support Medicare's shift toward value-based care," the Senators concluded.

To read the full text of the letter, click here.

Last September, U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) wrote a letter to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz, urging the agency to establish standardized billing codes for Medically Tailored Meals (MTMs) to help streamline reimbursements and support efforts to make our communities healthier.

Additionally, U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), Tina Smith (D-MN), and Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-KS) introduced a bipartisan bill to provide access to medically-tailored meals to treat acute diet-related illnesses in seniors. The Medically Tailored Home-Delivered Meals Program Pilot Act would pilot Medicare coverage of this treatment, to address the crisis of chronic disease in seniors.