Can a pain management programme approach reduce healthcare use? Stopping the revolving door

Patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain are frequent users of healthcare. Whilst evidence suggests that a multidisciplinary pain management programme (PMP) approach is effective in reducing patients’ levels of distress and disability, there is little research examining the cost-effectiveness of such an approach. The present study sought to address this by examining the impact a PMP had on patients’ pain-related secondary care healthcare use. A 90.5% reduction in healthcare use was found 12 months after the PMP, compared with 12 months before the PMP. The cost of the pain-related healthcare use 12 months before the PMP was £35,700. Twelve months after the PMP, the cost of healthcare use had reduced to £3879. The findings suggest that a PMP approach could reduce pain-related healthcare use.