Physicians, health payers and policy makers need to do a better job managing pain because 76.5 million Americans—one in four—struggle with pain without appropriate treatment.
That's according to the American Pain Foundation, which has launched a campaign to get rid of what it says are barriers that prevent timely, appropriate and effective care for pain.
"Alleviating pain has always been a basic principle of medicine and a moral obligation in a humane and civilized society," says Will Rowe, CEP of the foundation. "It is a travesty that in this day and age, pain remains woefully undertreated." Rowe added that societal misconceptions and fears about pain management are fueled by celebrity deaths and unnecessary restrictive regulation, "creating mountainous barriers to access to care."
He also says that "the suffering and toll untreated pain has on our own families and our nation is irrefutable and will continue to skyrocket unless members of the medical community, regulators, legislators, nonprofit, and private sector parties join forces to strategically conquer pain together."
The foundation calls for doctors and other providers of healthcare, as well as health plans or health insurance companies to:
- Set up a healthcare team to design individual, comprehensive, multimodal pain management plans for their patients.
- Tailor these plans to the individual living in pain. The plans should include pharmacotherapy, psychosocial intervention, physical rehabilitation, integration of complementary and alternative medicine, injection and infusion therapy, implantable devices and surgical intervention. Appropriate access to controlled substances should be a part of this plan, and should be used according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved indications "or other uses justified by research and clinical experience."
- Refer patients or allow them access to pain management specialists when appropriate.
- Develop state specific report cards on pain management practices based on the Pain & Policy Studies Group model.
- Eliminate regulatory and third-party payer policies and medical practices that usurp the "doctor-patient" relationship or deny pain care access to vulnerable groups. Eliminate those policies that are primarily developed for cost savings that may supersede the best interest of patient care and serve as an inappropriate and unacceptable form of healthcare rationing.
- Ensure that reimbursement is compatible with the time required for effective pain assessment and treatment and that it includes multi-disciplinary and multimodal practice of care.
The American Pain Foundation is a non-profit group geared to raising public awareness, providing practical information and promoting research to remove barriers and increase access to effective pain management.