The Nourish Program

Estimated review time: Less than 15 minutes

At Nourish, we’re redefining nutrition care. Our program offers personalized, evidence-based nutrition counseling across more than 50 specialties - all delivered virtually and covered by insurance. In fact, 94% of patients pay $0 out of pocket for their sessions.

In this training, we’ll walk through the full patient journey and show you how to leverage the Nourish platform to help your patients get the most out of their care.

1. Patient Sign-up and Intake

2. Initial Session (55-minutes): The Comprehensive Nutrition Assessment

3. Follow-up Sessions (55-minutes): Ongoing Care

4. Between-Session Support: Leveraging the Nourish app

5. Patient Graduation 🎓

Most patients begin by completing an online intake form, where they share their health concerns, goals, and counseling preferences. Based on this information, we match them with a licensed dietitian who aligns with their needs. Our scheduling system automatically accounts for licensure and insurance coverage - no extra work required from you.

Patients can then review provider profiles, choose their preferred RD, and book an appointment. Once booked, you’ll receive a confirmation email via your Nourish Gmail, and the session will appear on your calendar in the Provider Portal.

Before their first session, patients also:

• Enter insurance information to receive an estimate via the Coverage Calculator

• Complete three intake forms:

  1. Required: Consent, HIPAA, and Release Agreement

  2. Optional, but encouraged: Nutrition Intake Form and Release of Information (ROI)

If a patient submits an ROI, we automatically fax your chart notes to their external providers - no action needed on your part.

Patients also receive a welcome email introducing you as their provider and confirming session details.

Your first 55-minute session with a patient is critical for establishing rapport and initiating a personalized care plan. Here’s what to prioritize:

• Build rapport: Take time at the beginning of the session to share a bit about yourself and ask about the patient's interests or experiences. Be intentional about building rapport from the start, as a strong rapport correlates to a positive patient experience, stronger retention, and better clinical outcomes.

• Comprehensive Nutrition Assessment: In the initial session, the dietitian conducts a comprehensive nutrition assessment to understand the patient’s lifestyle, medical history, and nutritional needs. This allows the dietitian to assess the patient’s nutritional needs, understand where the patient is at in their care journey, and develop a personalized treatment plan to help the patient reach their health goals.

• Establish expectations: The dietitian will educate the patient on Nourish’s Clinical Philosophy and set expectations for the Nourish Program, including weekly, recurring sessions.

• Set goals: Together, the dietitian and patient will establish both short and long-term goals. The dietitian is expected to provide actionable recommendations and resources.

• Schedule follow-ups: The session will conclude with the dietitian scheduling follow-ups with the patient. Best practice is to schedule weekly, recurring sessions for the duration of the Nourish program (typically, 12 weeks), but the expectation is to hold weekly sessions for at least six weeks.

• Review our First Appointment Checklist here.

• Optional read: More details on initial session standards of care here!

Each 55-minute follow-up session is an opportunity to strengthen your connection with the patient, reinforce progress, and continue building toward long-term health goals.

• Continue to build rapport: Check in with your patient. What happened since the last session? On a personal level, did they do anything fun? On a professional level, how did they progress towards their short-term goals? Regardless of success, demonstrate active listening, show empathy, and offer support as needed.

• Implement treatment plan: In follow-up sessions, the dietitian will work with the patient to fine-tune and implement the personalized treatment plan. This includes monitoring progress, collecting outcomes, updating short- and long-term goals, and providing actionable education, recommendations, and resources that will help the patient build sustainable habits.

• Schedule follow-ups: Each session should conclude with the dietitian scheduling follow-up sessions. Follow-ups should be scheduled weekly for at least the first 8 weeks. After 8 weeks, dietitians should consider their own clinical judgment and patient needs/preferences to determine the ideal session frequency.

• Review our Follow-Up Session Checklist here.

• Optional read: More details on follow-up session standards of care here!

Increased patient engagement is strongly correlated with improved health outcomes. One of the many advantages of the Nourish Program is that it is easy for patients to remain engaged in their care journey, even outside of the session itself.

Dietitians are expected to encourage patient engagement between sessions by utilizing the following portal features. View the video in this training for an overview of each!

Collaboratively set 2–3 SMART goals each session. These appear in both the Patient and Provider Portals, making progress tracking easy and interactive. You must have at least one active goal to sign and lock the chart note.

After each session, an AI-generated summary is shared with the patient via the portal, helping reinforce key takeaways. You can edit the summary or attach resources before sending.

Our library of branded resources and curated recipes supports personalized care. Share them directly from the “Resources” tab in the Provider Portal.

Generate AI-powered meal plans tailored to the patient’s dietary needs. Always review for clinical accuracy before sharing.

Stay connected with patients directly through the secure portal. Check regularly for new messages and use the “Set Status” feature to manage response time expectations.

You can also bulk message multiple patients or use the “nudge” button to prompt follow-up scheduling.

Research shows that consistent meal logging is linked to better health outcomes—but as a provider, you know how difficult it can be for patients to keep up with. On many other platforms, logging is time-consuming or hidden behind a paywall. At Nourish, we build our tools with patients in mind. Our meal logging feature is completely free and uses AI to make the process as fast and intuitive as possible.

We also designed meal logging with the dietitian in mind. In the Provider Portal, you’ll have access to AI-generated insights and reports automatically built from your patient’s meal log data—making it easier to identify patterns and inform care.

To access these, go to the patient’s profile and open the Journal tab. Click the Insights banner to view insights across four categories: Positives and Progress Highlights, Areas for Improvement, Trends and Patterns, and Condition-Specific Considerations. You can provide feedback on the usefulness of the insights, and if needed, regenerate them— indicating the specific changes you wish to see.

Just below the insights, you’ll find visual summaries of your patient’s daily macronutrients, calorie intake, and meal timing. Each chart includes filters, allowing you to tailor the view to what’s most relevant for your care approach. Beneath the graphs, you can review all individual meal log entries for the selected timeframe. For convenience, we’ve also embedded this data directly into the chart note—so it’s easily accessible during your session.

Optional watch: This demo provides additional detail on the meal logging feature!

The natural outcome of high-quality, clinical-grade medical nutrition therapy is patient graduation.

Graduation doesn’t signal the end of a patient’s relationship with Nourish—instead, it marks a shift. Graduated patients should be encouraged to keep using the Nourish app to maintain healthy habits and support their long-term wellness goals.

Ongoing support may still be beneficial. Consider offering monthly or quarterly check-ins, using your clinical judgment to determine the right cadence for continued accountability and any necessary adjustments to the care plan.