Pain management panel to work on standards
March 1, 2002
Pain management panel to work on standards
Three professional organizations are teaming up to develop a common set of evidence-based measures for evaluating the appropriateness and effectiveness of pain management for patients suffering from cancer, back pain, and arthritis.
The two-year project, sponsored by the American Medical Association (AMA), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), will help health care providers determine how well they are managing patients’ pain.
In coming months, the three sponsoring organizations will convene a panel of practicing physicians, pain management experts, and performance measurement experts to define important aspects of pain management to be measured. The panel then will develop a set of standardized pain management performance measures. The final phase of the project will involve testing the measures across multiple care delivery settings.
The resulting measure set will be designed to help give providers consistent messages about the important aspects of pain management and will help to identify opportunities for improving the quality of care provided to these patients. The three organizations also are committed to working together to reduce duplicative data collection activities that are burdening a health care system already beleaguered with rising medical costs.
Purdue Pharma in Stamford, CT, is providing unrestricted funds to support development of the pain management measure set. Control and responsibility for the design and content of the measure set rest solely with the AMA, JCAHO, and NCQA. JCAHO will function as the administrative center for the project.
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