Relieving Pain in St. Joseph, Missouri: A Health Services Partnership for Changing the Way Pain is Perceived, Judged and Treated.

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This year the Department of Health and Human Services will publish a National Pain Strategy (NPS) Report, one of the most important recommendations of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, Relieving Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education and Research . The Pain Action Alliance to Implement a National Strategy (PAINS), a national alliance committed to fostering, supporting, and networking community- and state-based initiatives to improve chronic pain care and to supporting the NPS Report was created to promote implementation of the key IOM recommendations. PAINS believes that building and sustaining sufficient administrative and clinical infrastructure to support interdisciplinary, integrated pain care must be built at the community and state levels for the report to take root. The project Relieving Pain in St. Joseph, Missouri , begun in 2014 with the support of PAINS, is an example of a community-based initiative to promote integrated pain care, and it is our hope that sharing information about this project will benefit others considering similar work. The St. Joseph Community Access Network (CAN) was established in Buchanan County, Missouri, to help the estimated 30,000 uninsured and under-insured residents who seek primary care treatment in the emergency room (ER). In 2009, Heartland Regional Medical Center (now Mosaic), Northwest Health Services (Federally Qualified Health Center—FQHC), the Social Welfare Board (free clinic), and other healthcare providers in St. Joseph agreed to establish a network of patient-centered health homes to improve the overall health of this population and address the issue of inappropriate ER utilization. In January 2014, after successfully establishing a network of health homes and care coordination and achieving national committee for quality assurance (NCQA) level III recognition, CAN initiated a new project to promote integrative pain management (IPM) into these health homes. A work group including primary care providers, behavioral health …