A new Pain Medicine Position Paper published by leaders of the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM), reveals businesses lose billion annually due to ineffective pain care and the lack of optimal pain care delivery. Leaders from the organization are now implementing and teaching a new, "population-based" approach to delivering care with the goal of alleviating pain so patients can get on with their lives.
AAPMedicine's President Rollin M. Gallagher, MD MPH comments, "Pain affects everyone, and for many millions, pain becomes chronic, a scourge that affects every part of their lives--their work, their hobbies, their friendships, their families, their sex, their fun, their finances, their mood, and even their fundamental sense of identity, who they are. According to the National Institutes of Health, pain is one of our most important national health problems, costing the American public more than 0 billion each year in health care, compensation and litigation. The AAPMedicine's Position Paper offers solutions that will fundamentally change the way pain is approached in the health care system. The Paper proposes a population-based approach to pain management that will both improve the competency of the health care system to manage pain for the millions of patients suffering needlessly in hospitals with acute pain and on into their lives with chronic pain, and will also reduce the cost of pain to our society. People will be able to work who couldn't work before. People who work will work longer, better and more productively. People with terminal cancer will die in comfort, preserving their personal dignity and mitigating the emotional suffering of their families. The Proposal is consistent with the medical home approach being fostered as a solution to the problems besetting our health care system, an approach that emphasizes patient responsibility, early effective treatment, and when pain becomes chronic, competent longitudinal treatment, what we call 'chronic illness management'."
Step One: Prevention of disease or injury with the use of evidence-based self-care, such as diet, exercise, ergonomics (alteration of work activities) or cessation of smoking and other drug abuse to reduce the risk of injury or disease.
Step Two: If self-care is not working, patient will then visit their primary care physicians for evaluation and management using evidence-based algorithms.
Step Three: If disabling pain persists, the patient will be referred to a pain medicine specialist who will collaborate with a team of providers, including, nurse case managers, psychologists and physical therapists.
Step Four: If the patient remains in disabling pain, he or she will be referred to a pain medicine specialist within a subspecialty of care.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/168771.phpbumpInformative, timely, and imperative for many who have recently posted re:irretraceable pain.
Yeah Lynn!
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