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APS Bulletin • Volume 19, Number 3, 2009
Clinical Practice: Pain Clinic Perspectives
Steven Stanos, DO, Department Editor
CCOE Spotlight: Beth Israel Medical Center
By Liz Newman, APS Managing Editor
Members of the DPMPC receive the CCOE Award in San Diego, CA
The team from the DPMPC
APS honored five U.S. programs that exemplify the provision of outstanding clinical care and presented the awards to those programs at the 28th Annual Scientific Meeting Clinical Centers of Excellence (CCOE) and Awards Gala. These programs provide patient-centered, state-of-theart, evidence-based, cost-conscious, culturally appropriate care; provide appropriate access to interdisciplinary and multimodal care and other specialists from a variety of disciplines to ensure expert care; act as local champions to improve pain management; demonstrate innovation and serve as models of excellence for pain management; actively work with other healthcare organizations and the community to improve the quality of pain management; and demonstrate a commitment to advancing scientific knowledge related to pain.
The Department of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care (DPMPC) at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, NY, was honored for its comprehensive impatient and outpatient pain program. Vice-Chairman of the DPMPC Ricardo Cruciani, MD PhD, regards the CCOE program very highly. “The creation of the CCOE award is nothing but another very creative effort by APS to promote the values that have characterized its mission since its creation some 30 years ago. APS helps its members and healthcare providers to deliver the best possible patient care, and also to navigate some unchartered waters in difficult ethical and legal conundrums that are so unique to this discipline.”
The DPMPC was established 11 years ago as the first department in the nation of its kind, devoted to pain management and palliative care. It has created a unique model that links two clinical divisions (pain and palliative care) and three academic divisions (Research, Institute for Education, and Pain and Emergency Medicine Institute) under one leadership that reports directly to hospital senior management.
The team at the DPMPC strives to use creative strategies to deliver the best care during the economic downturn. Dr. Cruciani says, “In these difficult financial times for the healthcare industry, where funds have been slashed or cut for many services that are perceived as superfluous, but that are essential for a multidisciplinary approach to pain management, we saw a need to become more creative and develop partnerships to decrease cost, avoid redundancy of services, and secure the care that patients deserve and need.”
The DPMPC oversees interdisciplinary inpatient consultation teams for acute perioperative pain, chronic pain, and palliative care; an 18-bed inpatient unit for pain, palliative care, and hospice patients; and outpatient practices in pain management and in symptom control and palliative care. Among the innovations are a nurse practitioner-led fast track program to expedite appointments, a program in transcranial direct current stimulation, on-site acupuncture, and a Pain and Fatigue Study Center. It collaborates with other organizations, providing pain care to the HIVB/AIDS clinic and to a nearby ambulatory rehabilitation facility, and physician coverage to a home care program in palliative care.
Academically, the DPMPC is home to two accredited physician training programs (pain management, and hospice and palliative medicine); a nurse fellowship and social work fellowship; a caregiver program and Web-based public and professional education (www.StopPain.org); and a large clinical research program. It maintains a unique Asian Family Caregiver Program, has a faculty that educates and volunteers in national and international committees, and publishes the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.
