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Pain Control In Healthcare Organizations: Developing Effective Disease Management Programs, C. Richard Chapman, Stephen D. Lande, Bill H. Mccarberg, David B. Nash

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

Although medicine possesses the knowledge and technology for preventing or relieving most pain, poor pain control is still widespread. Unrelieved pain causes unnecessary suffering and increases health care expenditures. Among the barriers to improving pain control are poor provider education in pain management, misguided beliefs about the inevitability of pain and the dangers of pain medication, provider resistance to changing practice patterns, and administrative resistance to implementing improvements that incur short-term costs but lead to long-term savings. In short, poor pain relief in America's health care institutions is a system issue, and improvement requires a system-wide change. An effective program …