The newsletter “News and Views”, published by the Northwest Regional Telehealth Resource Center, reports that rural providers can be uncomfortable treating patients with chronic pain. To help remedy this situation, the University of Washington (UW) Division of Pain Medicine now offers weekly TelePain services using a panel of inter-professional specialists with expertise in managing challenging chronic pain problems. Dr. David Tauben, Chief of the Division of Pain Medicine (interim) and Medical Director of UW Center for Pain Relief serves as the clinical lead for UW TelePain. UW Medicine’s telehealth program has been providing TelePain video conferencing to support community providers since 2006 as part of a telehealth project funded by HRSA’s Office for the Advancement of Telehealth. The project originally was designed to serve American Indian and Alaska Native communities but with additional funding from NIH, the program was expanded to include rural hospitals and clinics. In 2011, the program merged to form a new collaboration between the UW Division of Pain Medicine and Project ECHO at the University of New Mexico.
TelePain sessions are conducted once a week and clinicians do not have to present a case in order to join the conference. Usually there are 35-40 clinicians gathered at 12-15 sites for the conference. Not all are connected by video conferencing since some connect by phone and others by Adobe Connect. The presentations and interactive consultations for providers are conducted with an inter-professional panel of specialists.
Further UWTelePain efforts are underway to control pain. A new NIH grant is studying how provider and patient outcomes can be successfully discussed within a symptom management intervention group environment using telehealth technologies. Patients must be over 18, seen within the past two months, fluent in English, and not exhibit cognitive impairment. All of the providers in the study must participate in a web-based survey to collect demographics and a baseline assessment during the first week of the study.
Healthcare providers and their patients are randomly assigned to either the telehealth enhanced symptom management intervention group or to the standard care group. Each patient is in the study approximately three months.
Healthcare providers in the intervention group attend UW TelePain sessions. Each provider gives a case presentation during a UW TelePain session for each patient they have in the study and a follow-up presentation is given approximately 4 to 8 weeks after the initial presentation.
Providers find that the UW TelePain approach is empowering and indicate that they are more likely to remain in rural practice when these resources are available to them. UW TelePain is helping to close the gap between urban specialists, rural healthcare providers, and their patients.
For more information email Cara Towle, Director of Telehealth Services at the UW School of Medicine at ctowle@u.washington.edu.