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  • The burden of persistent pain – roundtable findings


    Wellbeing Roundtable

    "Chronic Pain costs more than cancer and diabetes combined. Living with chronic pain can be devastating and is a significant cause of depression. It’s alarming to think that one in four people experience persistent pain but that’s the reality”, says Professor Lorimer Moseley, clinical scientist, author, pain expert from the University of South Australia and founder of Pain Revolution (a community based educational program educating educators on better chronic pain management for their patients).

    In a recent roundtable hosted by Investment Magazine and supported by AIA Australia, a group of business leaders from across the super and insurance industries gathered to discuss the burden of persistent pain.

    The goal of this discussion was to better understand how pain works and discuss how each organisation represented at the table could play a role in patient recovery.

    Here are some of the key takeaways:

    1. Pain sufferers need to be actively involved in treatment conversations

    It’s often the behaviour of those assessing and treating pain, and even those handling claims, that most significantly affect the course a patient takes. This behaviour has become ingrained and needs to change.

    “I’ve shifted a big chunk of my focus to the community. We want patients to drive their treatment by just [thinking], ‘If I hurt my back, I want to ask my health professional the right questions.’ They can ask their GP these questions and we can give them [doctors] the answers. That’s the idea behind the pain revolution,” says Moseley. 

    2. Change must start early in a patient’s journey

    That means before claim time, when they’re receiving many inputs about their pain, including medical diagnosis, assessment and ultimately treatment. Each interaction affects how a person feels about their body and the insurance system tends to reinforce these feelings through its processes and language, sometimes to the detriment of recovery.

    3. Insurers need to ask the right questions

    The misreading of symptoms and subsequent treatments are taking patients down a precarious road. Pain often persists with these patients and sometimes heightened by the health and insurance industries as they search for explanations with scans and the like to confirm the diagnosis thus reinforcing that there is physical pathology which is causing the pain. As an insurer we need to be careful how we communicate with our members so we don’t contribute to their pain. Our language can have an impact on health outcomes.

    4. Pain is a protector, but it can also be overprotective

    In his years of research, Moseley has found that pain is not an accurate measure of tissue health but rather is a protector. In other words, the unpleasant feeling of pain is simply a signal to try to change behaviour to help avoid injury. “We know that without a doubt, danger in your tissues is neither sufficient for pain nor necessary for pain,” he said. “But danger detection is very influential.”

    Indeed, pain can sometimes be overprotective, giving the body unnecessary warning signals. These signals can be conditioned over time as the body learns pain, meaning pain can increase in certain people when given the right stimuli. Amazingly, the body can also create pain without any physical stimuli and this distinction is critical to both insurance and society’s handling of persistent pain.

    5. Pain and depression are closely linked

    Part of solving the problem is identifying people who have chronic pain. The diagnosis is usually the pathology which has largely healed i.e. a fractured bone. However the pain continues. There is an opportunity to code these conditions as chronic pain after it’s treated so that these people receive the right intervention. “You guys can do something about this,” Moseley said. “I imagine your businesses are paying for a big chunk of the burden because the biggest costs are related to productivity. The costs for loss of income and treatment are substantial.”

    6. Early intervention and retraining pain systems are among the solutions

    Moseley called for a new approach to reducing pain, mostly around retraining pain systems. Increased movement and exercise, among other things, were mentioned throughout the discussion as central to helping patients rehab.

    It would be challenging to reshape the way the industry handles persistent pain but there are things everyone can do. The goal for us is to work together to see how we can do this better.

    “It’s really about how you get that education piece happening and how you get employers to understand as well. For example, if a super fund sees a large employer where the majority of claims come in, you can start to look at intervention,” Moseley says.


    Getting the message out

    Change is happening, although it will take more work on the ground. Moseley has been educating doctors and others in the field who typically rely on treatment instead of retraining and rehabilitating the body, but the work doesn’t end here. The focus should ultimately come back to patients, families and the wider community. “We need to have some sympathy for a GP who has 10 minutes when someone is suffering and can either embark on a journey of complexity and retraining the system or write a prescription,” Moseley said. “What would you do under the pressure?”

    “This is the problem with partnering with people who have a treatment to sell. That’s why I’m excited to deal with organisations that have recovery to sell. We’re not trying to achieve treatment, we’re trying to achieve recovery.”

    About Pain Revolution

    Pain Revolution is a bike riding event to educate and raise awareness about treatment and recovery from chronic pain. AIA are proud sponsors of Dr Lorimer Moseley and all the good work he’s doing with this initiative. Read a wrap up of how successful the 2018 ride was here and learn more about how Lorimer Moseley is leading the Pain Revolution.

    Contact AIA

    1800 333 613

    PO Box 6111
    Melbourne VIC 3004

    enquiries@aia.com.au

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    Contact AIA

    1800 333 613

    PO Box 6111
    Melbourne VIC 3004

    enquiries@aia.com.au

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    Copyright © 2021. AIA Group Limited and its subsidiaries or affiliates. All rights reserved. Priority Protection and Priority Protection for Platform Investors products are issued by AIA Australia Limited (ABN 79 004 837 861, AFSL 230043). AIA Vitality, a personalised, science-backed program that supports members every day to make healthier choices, is available with eligible products issued by AIA Australia. AIA Health with AIA Vitality is issued by AIA Health Insurance Pty Ltd ABN 32 611 323 034, a registered private health insurer governed by the Private Health Insurance Act 2207, Private Health Insurance Rules 2007 and the AIA Health Insurance Pty Ltd Fund Rules. The information on this website is current as at 14 January 2021 and may be subject to change. It is general information only and is not intended in any way to be financial, legal, tax, health, medical, nutritional or other advice. You should consider your own personal circumstances and needs and view the relevant product documents, fact sheets, fund rules and terms and conditions before making a decision to acquire such products. If necessary you should obtain professional advice from a financial, tax, medical or health professional. Unless expressly stated, any views or expressions of opinion (including any video content) do not represent the opinion of AIA.
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