Impact of an Electronic Pain and Opioid Risk Assessment Program

Are There Improvements in Patient Encounters and Clinic Notes?

The American Academy of Pain Medicine recently published an article by researchers at Inflexxion Inc., Newton-Wellesley Hospital’s Pain Management Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Pain Management Center, and at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Family Medicine, that discusses the impact of PainCAS, a comprehensive electronic self-report pain and opioid risk assessment system, on clinical documentation and patient/provider communication.
Highlights from the study concluded that:

• Significant differences in favor of an electronic pain assessment condition were found
• Preliminary results indicate an electronic pain assessment program increases documentation of key elements of pain patient information in the medical record and improved discussion of substance abuse issues in the patient-physician encounter
• Standardization of assessments can lead to long-term improved quality of care

For more information about this study, please see the abstract.