APM™ and Valley Forge Medical Center Outcome Data
On Tuesday September 27, 2009 I presented at the Moment of Change Interventionist Conference in collaboration with Valley Forge Medical Center (VFMC)—our first Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) Center of Excellence (COE). I was joined by Nancy Kompass, the Clinical Director at VFMC to present a workshop titled Successfully Intervening on Chronic Pain & Coexisting Disorders. We are pictured here by the VFMC Sponsor Booth.
Many of the interventionist approached us at the workshop or at the VFMC Sponsor Booth and told us they wished they know about us earlier because they have been attempting to intervene on this population—people with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction—and weren’t sure where to send them. Now they know.
I am very excited about how far Valley Forge Medical Center’s Breakthrough Chronic Pain Management Program has come since obtaining full APM™ COE Certification last June. One of the areas required for APM™ COE programs is to collect pre and post treatment data. Together pulled together some interesting outcome data that Nancy and I also presented to our workshop participants and I am including some of those outcomes here today.
(1) My Ascending versus Descending pain symptom instrument, in which the Ascending symptoms are physical and the Descending symptoms are psychological/emotional:
Number of Physical Symptoms Circled: Highest = 27
Pre-Treatment reported 13.5 symptoms
And Post-Treatment reported 11.6 symptoms
This is a 14.07 % decrease
Physical Symptom Severity Rating: Highest = 90
Pre-Treatment reported 59.4 level of severity
And Post-Treatment reported 46.4 level of severity
This is a 21.89 % decreaseNumber of Psychological Symptoms Circled Highest = 27
Pre-Treatment reported 14.5 symptoms
And Post-Treatment reported 12.8 symptoms
This is a 11.72 % decreasePsychological Symptom Severity Rating Highest = 90
Pre-Treatment reported 64.8 level of severity
And Post-Treatment reported 49.2 level of severity
This is a 24.07 % decrease
(2) The American Academy of Pain Management’s Pain Outcome Profile (POP) instrument five areas from the AAPM’s POP we decided to highlight progress in treatment were:
Reported Level Of…
Mobility increased 17.9%
Activities of daily living increased 17.6%
Vitality increased 15.2%
Fear about pain decreased 20.0%
Negative affect decreased 23.6%
Over the next six months my plan is to assist VFMC to improve this data significantly. We will also continue to track the difference between patients who are in the program under 30 days to those in the program over 30 days. My preliminary review already shows a significant positive difference in the longer term treatment stays. Please sign up for the APM™ Chronic Pain Solutions E-Newsletter to keep updated about our outcome data. To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.
You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.
If you would like to see my upcoming trainings and especially to learn about my 20 hour (three days) Addiction-Free Pain Management® Certification Training on December 7-9, 2009 in Sacramento California designed to teach treatment strategies for people living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including disorders including addiction please Click Here and scroll down to the December 7-9, 2009 for the description and how to sign up.
