Post-Operative Chronic Pain Costly for Hospitals
/By Pat Anson, Editor
A new study by Canadian researchers has documented the long-term cost that chronic pain can have when patients are sent home from a hospital with post-surgical pain that doesn't go away.
Researchers at Toronto General Hospital (TGH) and University Health Network (UHN) estimate that about 15 percent of complex post-operative patients develop moderate to severe chronic pain, and have significant disability that requires the use of opioids for long-term pain relief.
The estimated additional cost of treating those patients at TGF ranges from $2.5 million to $4.1 million year, due to repeat doctor visits, extended hospital stays, and re-admissions.
On average, chronic pain patients stay five to seven days longer in the hospital for the same condition as patients who do not have chronic pain.
"We need to break the cycle of pain before it becomes chronic. It is much harder to treat someone when the pain is entrenched, and the window of opportunity is lost," says senior author Hance Clarke, MD, who is Director of the Transitional Pain Service in the Anesthesia Department and Pain Management at TGH and a clinical researcher at the Toronto General Research Institute.
Clarke says it takes about six months for post-surgical pain to develop into chronic pain, and it’s important to intervene before that happens. About 13 percent of TGH surgical patients already have chronic pain when the enter the hospital, which can worsen after surgery.
The cost of treating chronic pain in Canada is estimated at between $47 billion and $60 billion a year -- more than HIV, cancer and heart disease combined. It costs about $5,000 a year to care for a chronic pain patient in Ontario.
"Pain is an epidemic, and the costs to the healthcare system, as well as to patients, are staggering," said Clarke.
Up to 70 percent of patients after major surgery are discharged from the hospital with a prescription for opioids. Three months later, over one in four (27%) are still using them.
"Identifying at-risk patients, typically those who have pre-existing pain, mental health issues, chronic use of opioids before surgery, is critical, so that we can develop follow-up plans, and educate patients and other healthcare providers,'' saysClarke. "We need to give patients the tools to manage their pain, should it become problematic."
The study findings are published in the journal Pain Management.
Ironically, the Canadian study highlighting the need for early pain intervention in hospitals comes at a time when politicians and some leading health officials in the U.S. are calling for an end to hospital surveys that ask patients about the quality of their pain care.
The American Medical Association recently said the patient surveys, which are required by Medicare, “are clearly motivating forces for opioid prescribing.”
Medicare says there is no evidence to support that claim, but has proposed dropping all pain questions from the survey.
