Comprehensiveness,uniformity and standardization in the evaluation of patients with complaints of pain

An increasing number of physicians from a variety of disciplines are specializing in the treatment of patients with pain, and reporting treatment success using disparate interventions. Due to the lack of standardized evaluations of patients with pain, however, it has been impossible to reasonably assess the claims of any facility and even more difficult to compare the types of treatments from a variety of treatment settings. This paper will describe the process of the fomation of the Uniform Outcome Measures Committee of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. The deliberations of the Committee and the status of the development of a data collection system package will be described.