Outcomes Assessment in Pain Care
At the 2018 American Academy of Pain Management Annual Meeting, Ravi Prasad, PhD from Stanford University School of Medicine discussed outcome assessments in pain management.
Outcomes tracking challenges:
- Financial limitations
- Logistical barriers
- Uncertainty, what should we assess
- Implementation of findings
Most clinicians are not tracking outcomes because they don’t know how to use this information in their practice, have no infrastructure for this tracking, or many other reasons. They feel outcomes assessments are more important for researchers than practitioners.
What would be useful to measure:
- Medication usage
- Physical functioning
- Pain level
- Pain interference
- Mood functioning
- Disability perception
- Sleep
In surveys, patients have overwhelmingly said they would like their physicians to track outcomes. This needs to be a higher priority for physicians.
Part of the reason there is not widespread support for these programs is the lack of outcome studies. Better outcome studies will result in better acceptance by payers.