Thursday, December 29, 2011

Patients in Chronic Pain Have Increased Due to the Economy

By David Greene


Pain in the United States is at all-time high. Over 100 million citizens are currently dealing with a chronic pain problem, which is approximately 1/3 of the population. A lot of individuals would normally be a candidate for some type of surgical procedure to alleviate the pain. This could be a joint replacement or a spinal fusion or maybe a disc decompression surgery or a spinal decompression.

Surgery in this country is not free. A lot of patients these days have higher insurance deductibles, along with large co-pays which means when you add up the total patient responsibility this is often economically not feasible in an elective situation. With the current economy, a lot of folks are opting to delay their elective surgeries and opt for nonoperative pain management.

Undergoing surgery may require a significant time off of work for individuals. The problem with this is that in this economy many individuals are scared about losing their jobs. Avoiding surgery and undergoing nonoperative pain management may allow the patient to simply miss a couple hours work every month due to appointments as opposed to weeks at a time for a surgical recovery.

With the current state of the economy and individuals have dropped their health insurance due to financial problems. Without it, it may be possible to pay out-of-pocket for pain management but not for the high cost of surgery.

There are quite a few patients in their late 50s and early 60s who will soon be on Medicare. They could just opt for pain management so that when actually need surgery they'll be on Medicare and their responsibility financially will be significantly less.

National unemployment rates of around 9%, so being unemployed is typically a valid reason to try and avoid surgery. In some parts of America, unemployment is a ridiculous 20% due to the continuing problem with the economy.

Numerous reports are showing now that the medical industry is shifting into a new normal that is not going to go away. All medical aspects of care are involved in this such as patients want to know if they can negotiate the cost of their care in the medical device companies having to downgrade their economic projections due to less and less elective surgeries being performed.

JP Morgan did some research this year showing the office visits have dropped numerous times most recently about 10% from the year before. Most analysts in the field feel like the amount of surgical procedures will come back to pre recession levels once the economy improves.

For example, joint replacements have been shown to be some of the best quality of life procedures we have. So eventually when a person's economic situation improves they will undergo the procedure.

Most individuals think of medicine as a recession proof industry. But that is inaccurate period now overseeing is a large shift in the economy that has even affected the desire of patients to have surgery, and has definitely shifted pain management into one of the most common specialties today.




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