ABSTRACT
Clinicians often lament the changes in reimbursement for health-care services, and report fond memories of the ability to provide multidisciplinary treatment in the late 1970s through the mid-1980s. Discordant stakeholder interests continue to fuel financial conflicts between health insurance plans and pain therapy clinicians. This chapter proposes measures to optimize business operations for the multidisciplinary pain management program. It describes the unique features of patient populations with chronic pain that affect business relationships. A behavioral group program offered multidisciplinary outpatient treatments, and anesthesiology-based interventions were developed on a fee-for-service basis, but clinicians’ services were reimbursed through specialty-specific submitted claims. Multidisciplinary behaviorally oriented pain therapy services were developed by faculty at the affiliated academic teaching hospital. The multidisciplinary pain therapy program stands squarely in the aim of health insurance plans cost-cutting measures. Competition in Massachusetts has led to an environment increasingly focused on academic health systems.
