Poster 101: Perceived efficacy of pain centers among injured workers, treating professionals, and insurance claims managers.

Abstract

Objective: To compare perceptions of physicians, vocational rehabilitation counselors, pain center professional staff, and claims managers for a workers’ compensation carrier (Robinson et al. Clin J Pain 1998;14:202–8) with the perceptions of injured workers who had received pain center treatment. Design: Telephone survey. Setting: Community of injured workers. Participants: 69 injured workers who had undergone pain center treatment 4.5±.69 years previously. Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures: Subjects rated 8 items on 7-point scales, indicating how much their pain center treatment had helped them return to work, improve physical capacities, improve emotional functioning, manage pain better, reduce pain severity, and improve quality of life. A composite score based on the 8 items was calculated. Results: As reported previously, analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the composite scores of center professional staff were very favorable, scores of claims managers were quite negative, and scores of physicians and vocational rehabilitation counselors were intermediate. Scores of injured workers were very similar to those of claims managers, and lower than those of center professional staff, physicians, and vocational rehabilitation counselors ( P<.01 for all post hoc comparisons). ANOVAs on the 8 specific items revealed similar trends. Groups agreed (correlations, .69 to .93) that pain centers were more effective in promoting some outcomes (eg, improving physical capacities) than others (eg, reducing pain severity). Conclusion: Injured workers who had undergone pain center treatment shared the negative perceptions of pain centers that claims managers expressed in the previous research. Outcome data from pain center treatment (Robinson et al. Am J Ind Med 2001;39:227–36) are more consistent with the negative perceptions of injured workers and claims managers than with the very positive perceptions of center professional staff.