Get off my back! A New Initiative at AHP aims at helping out with that.

Get off my back! A New Initiative at AHP aims at helping out with that.

December 8th, 2016 | Clinical Connections

By John Bisognano

AHP continues to focus on the evaluation and treatment of back pain as an area for which there may be considerable variation of care in the community, with opportunities for cost savings as well as overall improvement of patient outcome. A multidisciplinary committee consisting of a wide range of community and University of Rochester primary care physicians and specialists is using the Monroe County Medical Society Guidelines as a framework on which to guide this effort.

Four particular areas of intervention have been identified, and subcommittees assigned to these areas:

1. Surgical Management of Disease
2. Imaging and other Diagnostics
3. Physical Therapy and Chiropractic Care
4. Pain Management

We recognize that behavioral health and emergency medicine affects all of these areas, and representatives from those areas are assisting as well in this effort. The tone of so much of the management of back pain is set during the initial patient visits for this condition. With that, we will be developing or adopting patient educational material as well as an educational program for providers in an effort to promote some uniformity of treatment across the entire AHP network.

Stay tuned for future developments, and please let me know if you have any ideas which you’d like us to incorporate into this initiative. Just email me at [email protected].