Journal of Pain & Relief
Open Access

Abstract

Chronic pain now affects an estimated 100 million Americans at a cost of over $600 billion in treatment and lost productivity. This means that more people suffer from chronic pain, than heart disease, diabetes, and cancer combined. The impact this has had on our society has been huge. For a number of years now, opioids have been the mainstay treatment for complex, debilitating chronic pain problems. Unfortunately, recent reports have also found significant problems with the misuse of opioids as they have become more readily available, and they have now become a significant source of accidental overdose deaths. At the same time, there are few comprehensive interdisciplinary pain treatment programs available across the country despite their significant need and strong support based from evidence-based outcome measures. Barriers to delivery of care include cost, a lack of insurance coverage for bundled care, and a lack of adequately trained doctors and practitioners to provide treatment. We have developed a novel approach to functional restoration that includes multiple disciplines and a structured curriculum while individualizing specific rehabilitation needs. We also offer methods to concurrently diminish over-dependence on opioids. We present outcome data based on our functional restoration program showing significant gains of objective and subjective factors by our patient population. A number of different measures of physical function, activities of daily living, and psychological well-being are used to measure progress. We discuss the various disciplines utilized and coordinated to achieve reliable positive outcomes in a complex chronic pain population.

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