Study Finds Patient Satisfaction With Pain Management Relies Most On Coordination of Care

Newswise writes: The main driver of patient experience depends less on the individual provider than on the overall coordination among the clinic, the primary care physician and all others who participate in delivery of care, Stanford researchers reported. The results, in a scientific poster at the 31st Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, describe the wisdom of moving away from episodic care and toward long-term, overall outcome in ways that matter to the patient.  Patient satisfaction, and more broadly patient experience, is an emerging metric demonstrating healthcare quality to policy makers and insurance payers but is an assessment on which pain medicine, as a specialty, has historically underperformed. This is unfortunate, because patient satisfaction is of particular importance to those who suffer with chronic pain, the study’s lead author said.