The economics of pain practice

Abstract

The dynamic health care market demands a certain degree of familiarity with the vocabulary, concepts, and principles related to the discipline of health care economics. In this paper, an overview of the economic issues pertaining to pain medicine are presented. The first subject presented concerns the unique nature of medical economics. There is considerable debate concerning the applicability of economic principles to health care, due to the necessary alteration of several assumptions that are basic to the discipline of economics. Next, several fundamental economic principles are presented, including such concepts as the rational consumer, scarcity, choice, exchange, marginal analysis, supply and demand, elasticity, and cross-price elasticity. The principles concerning the optimization of the production of medical services are presented in order to assist the reader in considering their services as a product of the health care industry. An overview of the concepts involved in the determination of the cost effectiveness of a given diagnostic, therapeutic, or prognostic intervention are presented for the purpose of stimulating the refinement of evidence-based medical decision making in the specialty of pain medicine. Finally, several economic “myths” are elucidated, and a perspective of the pain medicine physician in American society is offered to the reader.