Does telehealth use impact clinical outcomes during a multi-disciplinary pain management program?

COVID-19 necessitated a shift in the provision of pain management services to telehealth, however, there is limited evidence exploring telehealth use and clinical outcomes in multidisciplinary pain management programs. The aim of this cohort study was to examine the association between telehealth utilisation and clinical outcomes for patients completing a multidisciplinary pain management program.

Clinical outcome data collected between March 2020 and March 2022 from 194 patients who had completed a 3-month multi-disciplinary pain management program and 6-month follow up period were obtained. Clinical outcomes were measured using the Brief Pain Inventory, Pain Self Efficacy Questionnaire, Pain Catastrophizing Scale and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale. Multivariate analyses controlling for baseline scores assessed the association between the proportion of telehealth consultations and clinical outcomes.

The average proportion of telehealth consultations was highest for psychology consultations (54.3%), followed by medical (32.4%) and physiotherapy consultations (28.3%). The proportion of telehealth utilisation for psychological or medical consultations was not significantly associated with a change in clinical outcomes. For physiotherapy consultations there was a small but statistically significant association between a higher proportion of telehealth and amount of improvement in Brief Pain Inventory Interference scores (β = -0.013, 95% CI -0.026 to -0.000).

The results of this study suggest that telehealth consultations may be incorporated into a multi-disciplinary pain management program without adversely impacting clinical outcomes.