January 26, 2017 – Expanding Meals on Wheels

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Anchor lead:  Can Meals on Wheels improve health outcomes? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Meals on Wheels is a national organization that brings two meals a day to home bound people, mostly seniors.  Now Dan Hale, assistant professor of geriatrics at Johns Hopkins, describes a new venture with this organization, Johns Hopkins, and a novel type of investment firm that helps fund ventures with potential social impact by issuing what are known as ‘social impact bonds.’

Hale: Meals on Wheels of central Maryland, Meals on Wheels America, and Quantified Ventures, that handles these sorts of social impact bonds, have been working with us to see if by expanding the range of services that Meals on Wheels offers, we could actually decrease the readmissions to the hospital, even admissions to the hospital, and ED visits.  :24

Hale says there’s no question keeping people out of the hospital is a win-win for everyone. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.