Turning Food Providers into Healthcare Partners

The state of Massachusetts recently reached a milestone in its Food is Medicine journey. At the beginning of this year, 43 community-based organizations in the state, including many food banks, became Medicaid healthcare providers.

“They have become just like your doctor,” said Stephanie Buckler, Deputy Director of Social Services Integration at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services. As medically tailored food providers, they’ve gone through all the hoops of getting certified and receiving official identifiers that let them conduct claims transactions in a way that meets federal privacy laws. (For more on one Massachusetts food bank’s Food is Medicine experience, see our article here.)

“They’re able to bill Medicaid, they’re able to submit claims, and they’re able to deal with claims that were not paid correctly,” Buckler said at the Food as Medicine conference in Chicago last week, adding, “It is super-exciting to see that.”

Such an achievement hasn’t happened in isolation. The state of Massachusetts has acted as a key convener of the food providers, providing guidance, infrastructure dollars, connections, as well as legislation favorable to advancing the state’s Food is Medicine ecosystem. “What we’ve tried to do is really work hand in hand with our community-based organizations to do this and make sure that our healthcare organizations are working hand in hand with them,” Buckler said.