You might think of food as the fuel that keeps your body running. While that’s true, the right mix of food and nutrients can get your body humming by helping you heal from surgery or an injury, or prevent, manage or even reverse some health conditions.
If you’re dealing with a chronic condition, or your primary care provider has warned you that you need to make some diet and lifestyle changes to maintain your health, ask about whether you would benefit from nutritional therapy with a registered dietitian.
Nutritional therapy is so much more than a diet plan. You’ll meet with a dietitian who will create a personalized plan based on your lifestyle, dietary habits and overall health. Your plan will address specific health concerns and aim to improve your overall well-being. It could involve making dietary changes like swapping one food for another, taking supplements, making lifestyle changes, and learning how to read nutrition labels and shop smarter.
How can nutritional therapy help?
A dietitian can help with a range of concerns or conditions, including:
Community Health Options covers medical nutritional therapy visits with a registered dietitian to address specific medical or behavioral health conditions:
Community Health Options Members can find information about nutritional therapy coverage in the plan documents through the Member portal. For those with general health goals in mind, some plans—including Healthy Maine plans—offer a digital wellness platform, which may include unlimited sessions with a health coach who can help design an eating plan and offer steps to stick to it. Members with those plans can find specific details in their Member portal.
If you have questions about whether you’ll have to pay for nutritional therapy or want information about CISP, please call Member Services at (855) 624-6463 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Earlier this year, a Community Health Options Member gave birth to a premature baby. Thankfully, the newborn received the best possible care at a big city hospital, but Mom and Dad lived two hours away with two more children to care for, putting incredible strain on the whole family, on top of having a new baby with complex medical needs.
Our care managers began looking for a solution to end the family’s four-hour commute. Once the baby was stabilized and doing well, we worked with the family, the hospital and their pediatrician to move the newborn closer to home, transferring his care to the same pediatrician who would hopefully care for him the rest of his long and healthy childhood.