View this project as a published paper here.
In the last post about this project, I described what a multidisciplinary conference was and why they were needed in the treatment of chronic pain. However, in every study, you need to have a way to collect and analyze data. You may be wondering how this study was able to measure improvements in chronic pain patients: a concept that appears to be extremely subjective.
Recall that the problems of current forms chronic pain treatment involve the frequent utilization of the healthcare system. This is detrimental as it has been linked to physician burnout and is not seen as an effective way to treat chronic pain. Therefore, in this study, patients' hospitalizations, emergency department visits, pain specialist visits, and medication use (both opioid and non-opioid) were recorded before becoming involved in the MDC and 1 year after. Total healthcare utilization (HCU) was calculated by summing the number of hospital visits, emergency department visits, and physician visits for a given patient. Opioid medications were converted to morphine milligram equivalent (MME) quantities in order to accurately analyze opioid usage. In addition, patient numeric rating score (NRS) of pain were recorded. Lastly, this study engaged with the providers on the MDC for their views on the conference: if it simplified and improved care, provided more comprehensive treatment plans, improved pain relief, and improved communication between colleagues, fellow teaching, and job satisfaction.
Since this study was completed and published, there are significant figures and outcomes that I am able to share. This study showed statistically significant improvement in NRS scores and healthcare system utilization. Providers who were surveyed believed that the MDC improved patient care. Medication use did not improve significantly. You can read more about the results, limitations, etc. on the published paper (linked on the first sentence).
In a nutshell, this study asked the question, "What effects do multidisciplinary conferences have on the utilization of the healthcare system by chronic pain patients and how satisfied are physicians with these conferences?" Therefore, we looked at how MDC were able to decrease chronic pain patients' HCU, increase chronic pain patients' quality of life, and evaluate medical providers' experiences in being a part of the MDC. I assisted in writing parts of the research manuscript (introduction, methods, abstract, etc.).