How Nutrition—and Seamless Referrals—Are Reshaping Chronic Care

For many practices, integrating nutrition into care has historically felt just out of reach.

That’s changing.

In our latest episode of medent minutes, we spoke with Kelly Springer, founder of Kelly’s Choice, about how practices are using medent to make nutrition a seamless, scalable part of preventive care, and why that shift has real implications for chronic disease outcomes.

From “Extra” Care to Essential Care

For years, nutrition support was treated as an “extra”—a helpful recommendation not always integrated into the workflow. Cost barriers, limited access and cumbersome referrals made it hard for practices to act on. 

Now, with major insurance plans covering dietitian services for the first time in history, nutrition has moved from a “nice-to-have” to essential care that’s financially supported and scalable. 

“For most providers, they don’t know that nutrition services are actually covered under preventative services,” Springer said. “A lot of these services are covered in full and a lot of times for unlimited visits. So that is something new and exciting.” 

And with seamless referral workflows built directly into medent, providers can connect patients to registered dietitians without disrupting their clinical flow. No extra platforms. No friction. Just a natural extension of high-quality care.

“medent makes it so easy through their EHR system to connect directly with Kelly’s Choice…It has been as short as a week to get a Kelly’s Choice referral source on medent to be able to send those referrals.”