Current interventions to promote safe and appropriate pain management

Area of Science:

• Pain Management
• Healthcare Systems
• Public Health

Background:

• High costs of pain and reliance on opioid analgesics necessitate innovative pain management.
• The opioid epidemic requires comprehensive strategies to improve pain care.
• Multi-level interventions are crucial for effective pain management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe patient-, clinician-, system-, and community-level interventions for pain management.
• To report on lessons learned from implementing these interventions in 9 US healthcare systems.

Main Methods:

• Development and employment of multi-level pain management interventions.
• Implementation across 9 diverse healthcare systems in the United States.

Main Results:

• Patient-level interventions included educational tools, digital applications, and peer networks.
• Clinician-level interventions focused on education, follow-up care, and multidisciplinary teams.
• System- and community-level interventions involved metric tracking, EHR tools, safe storage, medication return, risk assessment, and access to reversal agents.

Conclusions:

• Multi-level pain management strategies can be effectively implemented within health systems.
• Intervention success is contingent upon widespread acceptance and utilization by the target population.