JULY 11, 2024
Data from the 2024 Pain Pulse Survey conducted by the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) reveal that practitioners believe there are several opportunities that will help them better serve their patients, like the adoption of telemedicine and development of nonopioid pharmaceuticals.
{RELATED-HORIZONTAL}However, concerns about the challenges of the profession led to a sense of pessimism among the majority of pain medicine doctors. “Challenging conditions related to reimbursement,
Data from the 2024 Pain Pulse Survey conducted by the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) reveal that practitioners believe there are several opportunities that will help them better serve their patients, like the adoption of telemedicine and development of nonopioid pharmaceuticals.
However, concerns about the challenges of the profession led to a sense of pessimism among the majority of pain medicine doctors. “Challenging conditions related to reimbursement, regulatory pressures and public misunderstandings regarding pain medicine were cited as the reason for worsening conditions, with 51.4% stating progress is slightly worse to significantly worse. These same issues were also cited as the biggest clinical practice challenges,” Sharon Heiges Kneebone, IOM, FASAE, CAE, the executive director of AAPM in Columbia, Md., told Pain Medicine News.
A total of 5,802 physicians in the field of pain medicine were surveyed, with a response rate of 3.6%. Despite what may appear as a low response rate, the results of the survey have a 95% CI and margin of error of 1.30%, according to researchers.
The issues that respondents identified as the primary challenges facing their practice were:
In addition to the above stated challenges, Kneebone said “there was significant agreement on the opioid crisis’s impact on practicing pain medicine with diverse perspectives and impacts. One common theme noted in the report is the need for adaptive strategies in pain management.”
To address these problems, AAPM advocates for finding solutions through a multidisciplinary team–based approach that mitigates the opioid crisis’s impact while advancing safe and effective pain management practices.
“Alternate therapies, continuing education, access advocacy and balanced policies focused on positive patient outcomes are key,” Kneebone concluded.
—Myles Starr
