A Cost-Analysis of an Interdisciplinary Pediatric Chronic Pain Clinic.

Chronic pain is characterized by high rates of functional impairment, health care utilization, and associated costs. Research supports the use of comprehensive, interdisciplinary treatment approaches. However, many hospitals hesitate to offer this full range of services, especially to Medi-Cal/Medicaid patients whose services are reimbursed at low rates. This cost analysis examines the effect on hospital and insurance costs of patients' enrollment in an interdisciplinary pediatric pain clinic, which includes medication management, psychotherapy, biofeedback, acupuncture, and massage. Retrospective hospital billing data (inpatient/emergency department/outpatient visits, and associated costs/reimbursement) from 191 consecutively enrolled Medi-Cal/Medicaid pediatric patients with chronic pain were used to compare 1-year costs before initiating pain clinic services with costs 1 year after. Pain clinic patients had significantly fewer emergency department visits, fewer inpatient stays, and lower associated billing, compared with the year before without interdisciplinary pain management services. Cost savings to the hospital of $36,228 per patient per year and to insurance of $11,482 per patient per year were found even after pain clinic service billing was included. Analyses of pre-pain clinic costs indicate that these cost reductions were likely because of clinic participation. Findings provide economic support for the use of interdisciplinary care to treat pediatric chronic pain on an outpatient basis from a hospital and insurance perspective. PERSPECTIVE: This article presents a cost analysis of an interdisciplinary pediatric pain outpatient clinic. Findings support the incorporation of a comprehensive treatment approach that can reduce costs from a hospital and insurance perspective over the course of just 1 year.

A Contemporary Medicolegal Analysis of Outpatient Medication Management in Chronic Pain.

BACKGROUND: Opioids are frequently used in chronic pain management but are associated with significant morbidity and mortality in some patient populations. An important avenue for identifying complications-including serious or rare complications-is the study of closed malpractice claims. The present study is intended to complement the existing closed claims literature by drawing on claims from a more recent timeframe through a partnership with a large malpractice carrier, the Controlled Risk Insurance Company (CRICO). The goal of this study was to identify patient medical comorbidities and aberrant drug behaviors, as well as prescriber practices associated with patient injury and malpractice claims. Another objective was to identify claims most likely to result in payments and use this information to propose a strategy for reducing medicolegal risk. METHODS: The CRICO Strategies Comparative Benchmarking System is a database of claims drawing from >350,000 malpractice claims from Harvard-affiliated institutions and >400 other academic and community institutions across the United States. This database was queried for closed claims from January 1, 2009, to December 31, 2013, and identified 37 cases concerning noninterventional, outpatient chronic pain management. Each file consisted of a narrative summary, including expert witness testimony, as well as coded fields for patient demographics, medical comorbidities, the alleged damaging event, the alleged injurious outcome, the total financial amount incurred, and more. We performed an analysis using these claim files. RESULTS: The mean patient age was 43.5 years, with men representing 59.5% of cases. Payments were made in 27% of cases, with a median payment of $72,500 and a range of $7500-$687,500. The majority of cases related to degenerative joint disease of the spine and failed back surgery syndrome; no patients in this series received treatment of malignant pain. Approximately half (49%) of cases involved a patient death. The use of long-acting opioids and medical conditions affecting the cardiac and pulmonary systems were more closely associated with death than with other outcomes. The nonpain medical conditions present in this analysis included obesity, obstructive sleep apnea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, and coronary artery disease. Other claims ranged from alleged addiction to opioids from improper prescribing to alleged abandonment with withdrawal of care. The CRICO analysis suggested that patient behavior contributed to over half of these claims, whereas deficits in clinical judgment contributed to approximately 40% of the claims filed. CONCLUSIONS: Claims related to outpatient medication management in pain medicine are multifactorial, stemming from deficits in clinical judgment by physicians, noncooperation in care by patients, and poor clinical documentation. Minimization of both legal risk and patient harm can be achieved by carefully selecting patients for chronic opioid therapy and documenting compliance and improvement with the treatment plan. Medical comorbidities such as obstructive sleep apnea and the use of long-acting opioids may be particularly dangerous. Continuing physician education on the safest and most effective approaches to manage these medications in everyday practice will lead to both improved legal security and patient safety.

Hospitalization due to acute exacerbation of chronic pain: An intervention study in a university hospital.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Hospitalization as a result of acute exacerbation of complex chronic pain is a largely hidden problem, as patients are often admitted to hospital under a variety of specialities, and there is frequently no overarching inpatient chronic pain service dedicated to their management. Our institution had established an inpatient acute pain service overseen by pain physicians and staffed by specialist nurses that was intended to focus on the management of perioperative pain. We soon observed an increasing number of nurse-to-nurse referrals of non-surgical inpatients admitted with chronic pain. Some of these patients had seemingly intractable and highly complex pain problems, and consequently we initiated twice-weekly attending physician-led inpatient pain rounds to coordinate their management. From these referrals, we identified a cohort of 20 patients who were frequently hospitalized for long periods with exacerbations of chronic pain. We sought to establish whether the introduction of the physician-led inpatient pain ward round reduced the number and duration of hospitalizations, and costs of treatment. METHODS: We undertook a retrospective, observational, intervention cohort study. We recorded acute Emergency Department (ED) attendances, hospital admissions, and duration and costs of hospitalization of the cohort of 20 patients in the year before and year after introduction of the inpatient pain service. RESULTS: The patients' mean age was 38.2 years (±standard deviation 13.8 years, range 18-68 years); 13 were women (65.0%). The mode number of ED attendances was 4 (range 2-15) pre-intervention, and 3 (range 0-9) afterwards (p=0.116). The mode bed occupancy was 32 days (range 9-170 days) pre-intervention and 19 days (range 0-115 days) afterwards (p=0.215). The total cost of treating the cohort over the 2-year study period was £733,010 (US$1.12m), comprising £429,479 (US$656,291) of bed costs and £303,531 (US$463,828) of investigation costs. The intervention did not achieve significant improvements in the total costs, bed costs or investigation costs. CONCLUSIONS: Despite our attending physician-led intervention, the frequency, duration and very substantial costs of hospitalization of the cohort were not significantly reduced, suggesting that other strategies need to be identified to help these complex and vulnerable patients. IMPLICATIONS: Frequent hospitalization with acute exacerbation of chronic pain is a largely hidden problem that has very substantial implications for patients, their carers and healthcare providers. Chronic pain services tend to focus on outpatient management. Breaking the cycle of frequent and recurrent hospitalization using multidisciplinary chronic pain management techniques has the potential to improve patients' quality of life and reduce hospital costs. Nonetheless, the complexity of these patients' chronic pain problems should not be underestimated and in some cases are very challenging to treat.

Transaction cost analysis of in-clinic versus telehealth consultations for chronic pain: preliminary evidence for rapid and affordable access to interdisciplinary collaborative consultation.

OBJECTIVES: With ever increasing mandates to reduce costs and increase the quality of pain management, health care institutions are faced with the challenge of adopting innovative technologies and shifting workflows to provide value-based care. Transaction cost economic analysis can provide comparative evaluation of the consequences of these changes in the delivery of care. The aim of this study was to establish proof-of-concept using transaction cost analysis to examine chronic pain management in-clinic and through telehealth. METHODS: Participating health care providers were asked to identify and describe two comparable completed transactions for patients with chronic pain: one consultation between patient and specialist in-clinic and the other a telehealth presentation of a patient's case by the primary care provider to a team of pain medicine specialists. Each provider completed two on-site interviews. Focus was on the time, value of time, and labor costs per transaction. Number of steps, time, and costs for providers and patients were identified. RESULTS: Forty-six discrete steps were taken for the in-clinic transaction, and 27 steps were taken for the telehealth transaction. Although similar in costs per patient ($332.89 in-clinic vs. $376.48 telehealth), the costs accrued over 153 business days in-clinic and 4 business days for telehealth. Time elapsed between referral and completion of initial consultation was 72 days in-clinic, 4 days for telehealth. CONCLUSIONS: U.S. health care is moving toward the use of more technologies and practices, and the information provided by transaction cost analyses of care delivery for pain management will be important to determine actual cost savings and benefits.

Evaluation of a clinical video telehealth pain management clinic.

OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this project were to evaluate patient satisfaction with the clinical video telehealth (CVT) pain management clinic, and to evaluate possible benefits of this clinic. METHODS: Data collected included the distance from the patient's home to the main Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center, the distance from the patient's home to the community based outpatient clinic (CBOC), travel distance saved for the patient, and travel pay status. Following CVT clinic appointments patients were asked to complete a written feedback assessment to evaluate patient satisfaction. All data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: Veterans saved 8,981 miles in travel distance, and the VA saved $2,317.51 due to averted travel reimbursement. There was a 90% satisfaction rate with the CVT pain management clinic services, and 90% of patients agreed that they would recommend telehealth to other veterans. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, patients are satisfied with the CVT pain management clinic. Furthermore, the substantial miles saved for the patients, as well as the cost savings for the VA, indicates that this service has tangible benefits. As this clinic continues to operate, it can be expected that miles saved for patients and cost savings for the VA will continue to grow.

[Economic effects of chronic pain in childhood and adolescence: self-assessment of health care costs for affected families before and after a multidisciplinary inpatient pain therapy]. / Familiäre finanzielle Belastung durch chronische Schmerzen im Kindes- und Jugendalter : Selbsteinschätzung der Krankheitskosten für betroffene Familien vor und nach einer stationären interdisziplinären Schmerztherapie.

BACKGROUND: Chronic pain in children and adolescents causes a high utilization of the health care system and thereby significant costs. The aim of the present study is to describe the economic effects of pediatric chronic pain from the family's perspective. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Six months before and 6 and 12 months after a 3-week inpatient-based intensive interdisciplinary pain treatment, the parents of 101 children with chronic pain filled in a standardized cost questionnaire containing the following parameters: (1) child's utilization of medical and social services, (2) subjective financial burden, and (3) type and extent of direct costs. RESULTS: During the 6 months before inpatient-based intensive interdisciplinary pain treatment, children used a median of four different services. After inpatient pain treatment, service utilization has been reduced significantly (p < 0.001). One fifth of the families report a high or very high financial burden before treatment. Family's direct costs are most often caused by travelling (86 %) and drugs (60 %). After inpatient pain treatment, family's financial burden decreased significantly (p < 0.001). The frequency of additional expenditures is also reduced after treatment: parents report less additional costs due to travelling and drugs (p < 0.001, respectively). CONCLUSION: The present study emphasizes the pronounced utilization of health and social care due to pediatric chronic pain. In the future, the use of appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic standards that contribute to avoiding unnecessary and expensive interventions is preferred.

[Integrated headache care network. Kiel Migraine and Headache Center and German National Headache Treatment Network]. / Sektorenübergreifende schmerzmedizinische Versorgung. Schmerzklinik Kiel und bundesweites Kopfschmerzbehandlungsnetz.

Migraine and other headaches affect 54 million people in Germany. They rank among the ten most severely disabling complaints and the three most expensive neurological disorders. Nevertheless, they are not adequately recognized in the healthcare system with sketchy diagnoses and inadequate treatment. This inadequate care is not primarily due to a lack of medical and scientific knowledge on the development and treatment of headaches but is predominantly due to organizational deficits in the healthcare system and in the implementation of current knowledge. To overcome the organizational barriers the national headache treatment network was initiated in Germany. For the first time it allows national cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary links between inpatient and outpatient care. A hand in hand treatment programme, better education, better information exchange between all partners and combined efforts using clearly defined treatment pathways and goals are the basis for state of the art and efficient treatment results. The treatment network is geared towards the specialized treatment of severely affected patients with chronic headache disorders. A national network of outpatient and inpatient pain therapists in both practices and hospitals works hand in hand to optimally alleviate pain in a comprehensive cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary manner. For therapy refractive disorders, a high-intensive supraregional fully inpatient treatment can be arranged. This concept offers for the first time a nationwide coordinated treatment without limitation by specialization and bureaucratic remuneration sectors.

Going to the USA--a US headache center from an Italian perspective.

During a period I spent at the UCSF Headache Center in the USA, I noted striking differences between the US health-care system and the Italian one in which I was trained. Here, I aim to outline some of these differences from a scientific-and, more importantly, from a sociocultural-point of view. Awareness of these aspects may help us to better understand different approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases, including headache.

Accountable disease management of spine pain.

The health care landscape has changed with new legislation addressing the unsustainable rise in costs in the US system. Low-value service lines caring for expensive chronic conditions have been targeted for reform; for better or worse, the treatment of spine pain has been recognized as a representative example. Examining the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and existing pilot studies can offer a preview of how chronic care of spine pain will be sustained. Accountable care in an organization capable of collecting, analyzing, and reporting clinical data and operational compliance is forthcoming. Interdisciplinary spine pain centers integrating surgical and medical management, behavioral medicine, physical reconditioning, and societal reintegration represent the model of high-value care for patients with chronic spine pain.

Medicare physician payment systems: impact of 2011 schedule on interventional pain management.

Physicians in the United States have been affected by significant changes in the patterns of medical practice evolving over the last several decades. The recently passed affordable health care law, termed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (the ACA, for short) affects physicians more than any other law. Physician services are an integral part of health care. Physicians are paid in the United States for their personal services. This payment also includes the overhead expenses for maintaining an office and providing services. The payment system is highly variable in the private insurance market; however, governmental systems have a formula-based payment, mostly based on the Medicare payment system. Physician services are billed under Part B. Since the inception of the Medicare program in 1965, several methods have been used to determine the amounts paid to physicians for each covered service. Initially, the payment systems compensated physicians on the basis of their charges. In 1975, just over 10 years after the inception of the Medicare program, payments changed so as not to exceed the increase in the Medical Economic Index (MEI). Nevertheless, the policy failed to curb increases in costs, leading to the determination of a yearly change in fees by legislation from 1984 to 1991. In 1992, the fee schedule essentially replaced the prior payment system that was based on the physician's charges, which also failed to live up to expectations for operational success. Then, in 1998, the sustainable growth rate (SGR) system was introduced. In 2009, multiple attempts were made by Congress to repeal the formula - rather unsuccessfully. Consequently, the SGR formula continues to hamper physician payments. The mechanism of the SGR includes 3 components that are incorporated into a statutory formula: expenditure targets, growth rate period, and annual adjustments of payment rates for physician services. Further, the relative value of a physician fee schedule is based on 3 components: physician work, practice expense (PE), and malpractice expense that are used to determine a value ranking for each service to which it is applied. On average, the work component represents 53.5% of a service's relative value, the fee component represents 43.6%, and the malpractice component represents 3.9%. The final schedule for physician payment was issued on November 24, 2010. This was based on a total cut of 30.8% with 24.9% of the cut attributed to SGR. However, as usual, with patchwork efficiency, Congress passed a one-year extension of the 0% update, effective through December 2011. Consequently, CMS issued an emergency update of the 2011 Medicare fee schedule, with multiple revisions, resulting in a reduction of the conversion factor of $36.8729 from December 2010 to $33.9764 for 2011.

Preclinic group education sessions reduce waiting times and costs at public pain medicine units.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effects of preclinic group education sessions and system redesign on tertiary pain medicine units and patient outcomes. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Two public hospital multidisciplinary pain medicine units. PATIENTS: People with persistent pain. INTERVENTIONS: A system redesign from a "traditional" model (initial individual medical appointments) to a model that delivers group education sessions prior to individual appointments. Based on Patient Triage Questionnaires patients were scheduled to attend Self-Training Educative Pain Sessions (STEPS), a two day eight hour group education program, followed by optional patient-initiated clinic appointments. OUTCOME MEASURES: Number of patients completing STEPS who subsequently requested individual outpatient clinic appointment(s); wait-times; unit cost per new patient referred; recurrent health care utilization; patient satisfaction; Global Perceived Impression of Change (GPIC); and utilized pain management strategies. RESULTS: Following STEPS 48% of attendees requested individual outpatient appointments. Wait times reduced from 105.6 to 16.1 weeks at one pain unit and 37.3 to 15.2 weeks at the second. Unit cost per new patient appointed reduced from $1,805 Australian Dollars (AUD) to AUD$541 (for STEPS). At 3 months, patients scored their satisfaction with "the treatment received for their pain" more positively than at baseline (change score=0.88; P=0.0003), GPIC improved (change score=0.46; P<0.0001) and mean number of active strategies utilized increased by 4.12 per patient (P=0.0004). CONCLUSIONS: The introduction of STEPS was associated with reduced wait-times and costs at public pain medicine units and increased both the use of active pain management strategies and patient satisfaction.

The costs and benefits of extending the role of the acute pain service on clinical outcomes after major elective surgery.

BACKGROUND: Acute pain services have received widespread acceptance and formal support from institutions and organizations, but available evidence on their costs and benefits is scarce. Although there is good agreement on the provision of acute pain services after many major surgical procedures, there are other procedures for which the benefits are unclear. Data are required to justify any expansion of acute pain services. In this randomized, controlled clinical trial we compared the costs and effects of acute pain service care on clinical outcomes with conventional pain management on the ward. Patients included in the trial were considered by their anesthesiologist to have either arm be suitable for the procedure. METHODS: Four hundred twenty-three patients undergoing major elective surgery were randomized either to an anesthesiologist-led, nurse-based acute pain service group with patient-controlled analgesia or to a control group with IM or IV boluses of opioid analgesia. Both groups were treated with medications to treat opioid-related adverse effects and received the usual care from health professionals assigned to the ward. The main outcome measures were quality of recovery scores, pain intensity measures, global measure of treatment effectiveness, and overall pain treatment cost. Cost-effectiveness acceptability curves were drawn to detect a difference in the joint cost-effect relationship between groups. RESULTS: There was no difference in quality of recovery score on postoperative day 1 between treatment and control groups (mean difference, 0; 95% confidence interval [CI], -0.7 to 0.7; P = 0.94) or in the rate of improvement in quality of recovery score (mean difference, -0.1; 95% CI, -0.4 to 0.1; P = 0.34). The proportion of patients with 1 or more days of highly effective pain management was higher in the acute pain service group than in the control group (86% vs. 75%; P < 0.01). Costs were higher in the acute pain service group (mean difference, US$46; 95% CI, $44 to $48 per patient; P < 0.001). A cost-effectiveness acceptability curve showed that the acute pain service was more cost effective than was control for providing highly effective pain management if the decision maker was willing to pay more than US$546 per patient per 1 day with highly effective treatment. CONCLUSION: In extending the role of the acute pain service to a specific group of major surgical procedures, the acute pain service was likely to be cost effective.

Patient satisfaction with chest pain unit care: findings from the Effectiveness and Safety of Chest Pain Assessment to Prevent Emergency Admissions (ESCAPE) cluster randomised trial.

BACKGROUND: Chest pain attendances at the emergency department (ED) in the UK are continuing to rise. Chest pain units (CPU) provide nurse-led, protocol-driven care for patients attending the ED with acute chest pain. The ESCAPE trial evaluated the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and acceptability of CPU care in the NHS. This paper reports the quantitative evaluation of acceptability: patient satisfaction with CPU and routine care. METHODS: The ESCAPE study was a cluster-randomised controlled trial of 14 hospitals in which seven hospitals were allocated to establish CPU care and seven to continue providing routine care. As part of the study, postal questionnaires were sent to a subgroup of patients attending the ED with chest pain before and after intervention at all 14 hospitals. RESULTS: There was a 42.8% response rate (2389/5584) for unsolicited self-administered questionnaires. There was no significant change in any dimension of patient satisfaction, although there was some weak evidence that the introduction of CPU care was associated with reduced satisfaction with explanations about medical procedures and treatments (effect of CPU -0.16 points on a 5-point Likert scale, 95% CI -0.35 to 0.02; p=0.089) and attention given to what the patient had to say (-0.17 points, 95% CI -0.35 to 0.02; p=0.077). CPU care had no effect on overall satisfaction with care (-0.08 points, 95% CI -0.26 to 0.10; p=0.393). CONCLUSIONS: No evidence was found that improvements in patient satisfaction associated with CPU care in previous single-centre trials were reproduced in this multicentre study. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN55318418 International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number Register.