The Secret to Better Pain Management

Whether your patients are suffering from chronic pain or acute back pain due to injury, their road to pain relief begins the same way: with quality care they can trust.

Unfortunately, healthcare providers from internal medicine specialists to complementary medicine practitioners too often work in a vacuum. From patient to patient, they have little insight into which of their treatments work best.

In clinical studies, physical therapy, acupuncture, pain medication and cognitive behavioral therapy have all been found effective in controlling patient pain. But pain management clinical studies are highly controlled environments, where researchers track the outcomes of every patient involved.

How can pain management specialist bring the academic rigor of a clinical trial into their everyday practice? With data.

OutcomeMD has created a patient reported outcome measurements (PROMs) platform that can be used by both the practitioner and the patient. PROMs allow patients to keep track of their progress and gives pain management specialists the insights they need to identify the most effective interventions. This can help clinicians deliver high-quality care to every patient, every time.

Through a fitness tracker-like experience that is easy and delightful to use, patients report their own outcome progress. This eliminates caregiver bias and helps pain management specialists see the full picture of their patients’ outcomes. This can help validate both surgical and nonsurgical treatment options, including  spinal cord stimulation, biofeedback and non-opioid pain control treatments.

With these insights, pain care can become more precise and more effective, leading to higher patient satisfaction and improved quality of life. And because OutcomeMD can be fully integrated into any pain management EHR, the platform is easy to use for both the provider and the patient.

OutcomeMD is being used in specialties as diverse as neurology, orthopedics, internal medicine and chiropractic care. Across every pain management discipline, specialists are using OutcomeMD to track the side effects of pain medication, validate the value of various treatment options and evaluate confounding factors, such as cancer pain, antidepressant use and pain medicine adherence.

Practitioners say the platform allows them to dial-in best practices and validates their recommended pain treatment options.

“OutcomeMD has enabled our practice to streamline our office intake and has allowed us to gather crucial data on how our patients are doing and how we are doing as providers,” said Douglas Krebs, DC, FACO, CCSP, CERT MDT, of Chicago Spine and Sports.

As importantly, PROMs helps patients understand their own progress. All types of pain, from cancer pain to low back pain to chronic pain or acute pain, can be seen as mysterious and debilitating from the patients’ perspective. OutcomeMD lifts the veil of mystery by giving patients’ insights into their own pain conditions — and empowers them to take control of their pain care management process.

Studies* of chronic pain sufferers found that patient satisfaction is not solely based on pain relief. Many patients who felt empowered in their partnerships with their clinicians were also more compliant with pain treatment recommendations — and reported higher satisfaction. This suggests that in addition to pain relief, this vulnerable patient population needs to know that they can trust their healthcare provider. In pain management, that trust is built on data.

Pain affects every aspect of a patient’s life. That is why the right pain management treatments can make all the difference to your patients. Alleviating pain conditions suffered by your chronic pain and acute pain patients, improves their quality of life.

This means less time contending with back pain, nerve pain or neck pain, and more  time spent with friends and family.

OutcomeMD helps elevate your practice by identifying the interventions that work best, allowing you to dial in best practices, improve patient care, empower patients and them patients with the pain relief they need to live their best lives.

*”Patient satisfaction with treatment for chronic pain: predictors and relationship to compliance,” Clinical Journal of Pain: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15951647/