AACIPM Issues Recommendations to CMS on Payment for Pain Care Services

In response to a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed rule regarding changes to the 2022 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, AACIPM submitted a letter to CMS outlining the healthcare settings and practitioners that furnish non-opioid pain management, the resources involved in treating chronic pain, and how CMS might design new codes that will better enable health providers to classify and treat pain. The letter, submitted on behalf of 26 individual signers and 8 organizations, aimed to highlight the many diverse practitioners and services that may make up a comprehensive integrative pain management treatment plan, and further, to highlight the issues that these providers face when attempting to bill CMS for the pain care services which they provide.

AACIPM issued five recommendations related to the creation of standalone pain codes, both time-based and value-based, and the need for CMS to ensure that clinicians are able to provide services “at the top of their license or certification” by eliminating unnecessary direct supervision requirements and providing reimbursement for the full range of evidence-based, guideline concordant services that they provide.

Read AACIPM Letter

AACIPM Promotes Deeper Understanding During Pain & Self Care Awareness Month

In honor of Pain and Self Care Awareness Month, AACIPM spent the month of September collaborating with our partners to spread awareness and deepen connections and understanding regarding the intersection of these important issues.

Bridging Self Care and Comprehensive Pain Management in Program and Payment Designs, presented in collaboration with Whole Health Institute, Midwest Business Group on Health, The Pain Community and University of Vermont Medical Center, is a 90-minute webinar in which we explore payment design with leaders who represent people with pain, mid-to-large employers, the financial/return on investment side, and the team involved with one unique payer-provider partnership in Vermont, the UVMMC Comprehensive Pain Program. The webinar, hosted by KnoWEwell Live, was held on September 28^th and the replay is available at the button below (it’s free and you need to register to watch).

View Slide Deck

Watch Replay

Webinar Information & Resources

Decolonizing Medicine: Toward Equity and Inclusivity in Integrative Healthcare, IM4US’ 2021 Annual Conference, was held September 23^rd-25^th with the goal of building more equitable models of integrative healthcare.

With over 700 registrants for this conference and an extraordinary list of presenters, it exceeded expectations!

AACIPM was honored to participate in this virtual event via the panel presentation, Advancing Integrative Pain Management Through Collaboration and Advocacy. AACIPM Director Amy Goldstein, MSW, and Megan Kingsley Gale, MSAOM, Director, The Hospital Practice Handbook Project for Acupuncturists and Their Hospital Sponsors, co-moderated this panel that featured providers and leaders who are making remarkable differences in the lives of people who are underserved. These leaders – Rocio Lopez, LAc, Risi Idiokitas, DAOM, LAc, Laura Ocker, MAcOM, LAc, Katie Thornton, RN, MSN, CNL, Richard Mandell, LAc, and Amy Mager, DACM, LAc – represent an important range of practice settings, geographic areas, payment models, and patient populations.

View Slide Deck

Conference Information & Resources

Why Our #PainCounts, held by U.S. Pain Foundation, brought together experts in the health care field and people with chronic pain to discuss critical issues surrounding pain management, highlighting what needs to change and how we can better support people with chronic pain.

Panelists included:

Carmen Green, MD, Dean of CUNY School of Medicine at the City College of New York and national expert in addressing disparities in pain care. See Dr. Green’s inspiring intro, the Pain of Prejudice, for US Pain’s INvisible Project.
Amy Goldstein, MSW, AACIPM Director who focused on synthesizing payor, provider and patient interests when it comes to access to multidisciplinary care; and

Gwenn Herman, LCSW, DCSW, a person living with pain who founded Pain Connection, a national network of chronic pain support groups, support leader trainings, and more.

Panel and Q&A Information

Cindy Steinberg Receives AMTA’s 2021 President’s Award

AACIPM would like to congratulate Cindy Steinberg of the U.S. Pain Foundation, an AACIPM partner, for being awarded the 2021 President’s Award from the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA), another AACIPM partner. Awarded each year, the AMTA President’s Award honors a recipient who has contributed to the profession in an outstanding manner. Serving as the National Director of Policy and Advocacy for the U.S. Pain Foundation, the Policy Council Chair for the Massachusetts Pain Initiative, and on the Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force created by Congress, Cindy is unparalleled in her dedication to pain advocacy.

Changing the health paradigm to support comprehensive integrative pain management takes tireless advocacy efforts, and we at AACIPM value working with Cindy, AMTA, and all of our dedicated partners in change!

Award Announcement

Updates from HHS

AHRQ Releases Systematic Review of Interventional Treatments for Acute and Chronic Pain

The Evidence-based Practice Center Program at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has completed and released their evidence review of interventional treatments for acute and chronic pain. The review found a number of treatments to be more effective than sham or usual care, including vertebroplasty, kyphoplasty, and cooled radiofrequency denervation. However, most evidence was limited and more research is needed to determine the benefits and harms of other interventional procedures addressed in the report.

To improve the future evidence-base, reviewers recommend that future trials of interventional procedures should enroll older, Medicare-eligible populations, utilize sham controls, evaluate function as well as pain, include rigorous evaluation of harms, evaluate longer-term outcomes, and evaluate benefits and harms according to demographic, clinical, and technical factors.

Evidence Review

NIH Study Shows Disparities in Opioid Overdose Deaths Underscore the Need for Racially Inclusive Solutions

According to a new study by the National Institutes of Health, published in the American Journal of Public Health, non-Hispanic Black individuals experienced a 38% increase in the rate of opioid overdose deaths from 2018 to 2019, while the rates for other race and ethnicity groups held steady or decreased, emphasizing the need for equitable, data-driven, community-based interventions that address these disparities. The research was conducted as part of the HEALing Communities Study, which aims to significantly reduce opioid-related overdose deaths by helping communities implement evidence-based practices to treat opioid use disorder and reduce other harms associated with opioid use.

News Release

NAM Discussion Paper Urges Health Care Quality and Safety Initiatives to Focus on Health Equity

A new discussion paper in NAM Perspectives, the digital periodical of the National Academy of Medicine, identifies health equity as the area of most urgent and cross-cutting concern for health care quality organizations. The paper outlines key barriers that are impeding progress toward health care equity, then offers a proposed agenda for centering equity in efforts moving forward, including: increasing patient trust and involvement; increasing community engagement; rewarding organizations for progress toward equity; improving data quality; and implementing new and improved measurement strategies.

Discussion Paper

Educational Opportunities

Methodology for Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of a Pain-Focused Brief Intervention: Emphasis on pain-related costs

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will hold a call on October 5^th, 11:00am-12:00pm EST, to discuss methods of determining the cost-effectiveness of certain pain-focused interventions. The intended audience for this call includes researchers, clinicians, operations staff, veterans, and the general public. Speakers include Christina Lazar, MPH, Kate Gilstad-Hayden, PhD, and Paul Barnett, PhD.
To join this call, please send your name and email address to: cyberseminar@va.gov.

VHA Pain Management News

Physical Therapy Orthopedic Residency Program

With funding provided by the Veteran’s Health Administration’s Office of Academic Affiliations, the Durham VA Health Care System Physical Therapy Orthopaedic Residency Program is a 12-month comprehensive clinical care residency experience that is coordinated through one-on-one patient care rotations in the outpatient and inpatient settings. The program’s structured rotations are designed to maximize exposure to a broad range of orthopedic diagnoses. Further, the program is proud to be on the forefront of telehealth care, successfully integrating telehealth into their outpatient care model since the 2020 academic year.

The program integrates Lab and Lectureship involvement opportunities in both Duke University and Campbell University’s DPT program musculoskeletal curriculum, continuous rotations of Research Project Initiatives at Womack Army Medical Center offering research opportunities off site, and numerous specialty clinic observational opportunities.

Reisdency Information

Psychophysiologic Disorders Association Conference

From October 28-30, the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association will feature twenty-two experts who will share their experiences in reducing chronic pain, functional syndromes and medically unexplained symptoms (collectively referred to as Psychophysiologic Disorders) through an evidence-based, biopsychosocial approach. The conference will include nine hours of on-demand presentations and three, live Zoom Q&A panels.

Attendees will have access to the full conference on-demand for one year and may earn up to 12 CE/CME hours for their attendance.

Conference Information

Message from the Director

As September is closing, I am full of gratitude, respect and humility as I think about all the dedicated people who are actively doing something today, to improve access to whole person, comprehensive pain care for everyone. Each unique contribution is part of the larger and shared movement necessary to change the practice and policy paradigm.

During this Awareness Month for Pain, Self Care and Suicide Prevention – we worked to connect more dots around these intersections in order to share practical information for and with people with pain, providers, payors, purchasers, and policymakers. I strongly encourage you to glance through this newsletter and read about other stakeholders that share your end-goal – to improve the lives of people with pain by providing evidence-informed, individualized, whole person, culturally sensitive, trauma-informed, multimodal, multidisciplinary care.

I’m positive we all have something new to learn if we allow ourselves to talk together and listen. I most certainly learned new things this month during our CMS-related discussions and while listening during three panels just this past week (IM4US, AACIPM Webinar, US Pain Foundation). I hope you can create a few minutes of space to expand your thoughts about person-centered pain care and how we can collaborate to improve access for everyone.

Onward and Upward!
Amy