Predicting Opioid Use, Increased Health Care Utilization and High Costs for Musculoskeletal Pain: What Factors Mediate Pain Intensity and Disability?

Best practice management of musculoskeletal pain is changing rapidly in response to recent health care reform initiatives. First and broadly in health care, value-based purchasing has incentivized high quality, low cost care.4,7 As a result, health care utilization and costs have become important outcomes by which health care systems and payers measure treatment effectiveness. Second and specific to management of musculoskeletal pain, recent clinical practice guidelines and national pain research priorities have called for reductions in opioid use, with the goal of increasing non-pharmacological treatment options while decreasing opioid-related morbidity and mortality.

from The Journal of Pain http://bit.ly/2Zuxv0L
via IFTTT