New research suggests that telemedicine services can improve the quality of care, positively affect medical outcomes in cancer treatment, and reduce overall harm and death associated with opioid use, and addiction by managing pain symptoms.
Patients with chronic conditions such as cancer commonly have underlying and co-occurring mental and/ or physical problems. The American Cancer Society (ACS) reported that patients with comorbidities, including cancer pain, have a lower quality of life, a lower rate of survival, and higher healthcare costs.
In a report by the ACS, cancer patients indicated that pain is the main source of physical and mental distress, and the American Pain Society reported that nearly 50 million American adults experience chronic moderate to severe pain. This has resulted in a high rate of harm and death associated with the medical and non-medical use of prescription opioids and substance use disorders. Approximately 2.1 million Americans were suffering from opioid-related substance use disorders according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Management of chronic moderate to severe pain can help increase survival time and rate of cancer patients and reduce the overall harm associated with substance use and abuse. Telemedicine services are a new and greener form of care that can reduce the national cost of healthcare and increase monetary savings and value of time without sacrificing and often improving the quality of information, services, and medical outcomes.
The National Institutes of Health recently conducted a study and found potential in utilizing real-time, secure, HIPAA-compliant data, voice, video and media services to integrate cognitive-behavioral pain management approaches into treatment.
Data was collected from cancer patients with a comorbid medical condition who were actively in treatment for breast, colorectal, lung or prostate cancer. Analysis indicated a significant decrease in pain severity, physical symptoms, psychological distress, and pain catastrophizing after completing the pain coping skills training (PCST) intervention program.
Findings suggest that the opportunity to receive treatment and engage in the intervention from home on mobile technologies contributed to the high rate of participation, favorability, and success of the intervention and study. In addition, 90 to 95 percent of participants reported a better understanding of pain, improved physical functioning, and confidence in newly learned skills to deal with and overcome pain.
Brief interventions delivered through mobile and electronic applications can effectively connect patients, doctors, and medical facilities and effectively teach patients with chronic disease to manage pain without relying on or abusing opioids.
Other studies have found that patients prefer the ease of accessibility over other factors when considering health care, particularly having access from home at their leisure to health records and having the option to contact a health care provider for mild symptoms, advice, and information in a timely manner.
