Meritus keeps it local when it comes to meals

Health system sources about 30% of its ingredients from within 60 miles. 

For years, Chef Joe Fleischman has been trying to buy meat, fruits, vegetables and other food for Meritus Health patients, staff and guests from local producers, but he always ran into problems with scale.

“We buy in bulk,” said Fleischman, director of nutrition services. “Farmers would come to us and say, ‘Can you use a dozen eggs?’ and I would say, ‘We can always use a dozen eggs, absolutely, but we need a lot more than that.’”

Indeed, Fleischman estimated the health system uses about 1,200 dozen eggs in a week.

“It’s always been difficult for us to source locally grown items due to the sheer volume of food we use,” he said. “Most farms are concentrating on smaller restaurants and farmers markets.”

Thanks to a Meritus team member, Fleischman found a solution to his sourcing problem in a Hagerstown-based food distribution business that relies on local farmers. Family Farm Direct has allowed him to buy about 30 percent of Meritus’ fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, honey and other products from farms within 60 miles of the health system headquarters in Hagerstown.

Family Farm Direct is run by Benjamin Barnett and focuses on connecting farms and processors with institutions, such as Meritus, creating a supply chain that secures local agriculture.

“For small farmers, there’s usually two options to sell your product,” Barnett said. “You can sell to a corporation or you can go direct in small retail, like restaurants or farmers markets. With corporations, you take the price you get. Small retail can be impacted by a lot of factors that make it so you can’t rely on the price.”

Barnett is a third-generation farmer who worked for years as an ag consultant on herd health management, nutrition and agronomy. He also has certifications as a professional animal scientist and certified crop consultant.

He was motivated to start Family Farm Direct because he was concerned about the future of farming, given market and environmental pressures. By connecting local farmers with local institutions, he’s able to provide financial stability through consistent customers and reduce transportation and preservation costs, too.

Fleischman said he sees Family Farm Direct’s mission matching Meritus’ community-obsessed focus. In addition to patient meals and those served at the hospital cafeteria, Robin’s Cove, locally sourced food is also used in the health system’s Food Farmacy program.

Under the philosophy that food is medicine, the program has a Meritus primary care or specialist write a prescription for a patient who is managing a chronic condition for the Farmacy, which is in the Robinwood Professional Center atrium.

The eight-week program provides a bag of food tailored to the patient’s medical condition, said Beth Fields Dowdell, DNP, CRNP, director of Community Health and Outpatient Care Management at Meritus Health.

It also includes recipes.

“We’re teaching the patient how to make a nutritious plate of food,” said Dowdell, who noted the program has had more than 1,000 pickups and 280 referrals since it started in May.

Fleischman said his goal is to have all of the health system’s food sourced locally, though that might be a tall task.

“But that’s how we want to expand,” he said. “We want to keep it as local as we can.”