As part of the Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services charged the federal government's Institute of Medicine (IOM) with assessing the state of pain treatment in the U.S. from a public health perspective. The 19 committee members prioritized strategies for improvements in the "Relieving Pain in America" A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education and Research" report.

The strategies developed included:

1. A heightened awareness of pain and its health consequences
2. An emphasis on the prevention of pain
3. Improved pain assessment and management within federal health care and financial programs
4. Patient education on management of their own pain through public health communications strategies
5. Decreasing the disparties in the pain experience among subgroups of Americans 

COMMENT: There are several problems with the report. First and foremost was the selection of the people who wrote it. There were no primary care physicians and no rheumatologists involved, despite the fact that 27 million Americans have some type of arthritis and despite the fact that primary care physicians are the first line of treatment. The committee was made up primarily of anesthesiologists , who are much more procedure oriented toward pain. Only one neurologist was included and there were a lot of epidemiologists.

Secondly, as with much of the Affordable Care Act, the report is very generalized and makes no specific, concrete suggestions on how to meet their strategies. The report states that more research and data collection is necessary, thus expanding the role of the feds even more, but still without concrete answers (this is how epidemiologists get paid).

Third, and related to the above, there are no actual treatment recommendations, especially involving alternatives to the procedures usually recommended by anesthesiologists (such as acupuncture, cold laser, etc), which are much more cost-effective but rarely used by such physicians.

Thus, the efforts of this committee are largely a waste of time and money and will not translate to better quality care nor lower costs.