In early 2019 AIA Australia (AIAA) partnered with the University of South Australia on a new research project designed to help AIAA claimants living with chronic pain. A world-first in the claims management environment, the study sought to determine whether pain coaching could help AIAA customers on Income Protection (IP) claims for persistent musculoskeletal pain achieve a faster return to life and work.

 

Approximately 50 per cent of all AIAA IP claims are for chronic pain and 43 per cent are for Total and Permanent Disablement (TPD). Furthermore, many claimants end up getting ‘stuck’ on claim, proceeding down lengthy paths of investigation and intervention and prolonged periods of physical inactivity and disability – none of which aids recovery. An effective pain coaching program that could both reduce wait times, and facilitate earlier returns to work, could therefore be beneficial to both AIAA and claimants alike.

Developed by Professor Lorimer Moseley and his team of pain experts, Pain Coach is a six-session coaching program that educates participants in pain and tissue healing and encourages them to re-engage with the kinds of activities they enjoyed pre-disability.

 

The study took place between March 2019 and March 2020 and involved claimants who had been unable to work due to chronic and persistent musculoskeletal-related pain taking part. Coaching sessions were delivered via tele-health – either online or over the phone – by trained physiotherapists or exercise physiologists.

One month into the study, promising results were already beginning to emerge. Overall, findings from participants indicated a:

 

Participants also completed a survey upon completing the program, and again the responses were overwhelmingly positive: 93 per cent reported that they’d found the program worthwhile, and 96.5 per cent said they’d recommend it to others.

For Professor Moseley, these findings support his belief that the way insurers and medical practitioners have traditionally thought about pain – and the methods they’ve commonly used in trying to treat it – both need to change. “What’s important (to understand) about persistent pain is that the pain system is overprotective, it increases its sensitivity,” Moseley explains. “And what we’re realising is that we can retrain our pain system to be less protective again.”

 

Pain works to protect the body by restricting a person’s actions and behaviour; where it becomes a problem is when it doesn’t abate once the body has recovered. And, according to Moseley, in this case it should be the pain system itself that gets retrained. Instead of attempting to mask or eradicate the pain with drugs, surgery or electronic medical devices inserted into the body, pain recovery should be about pursuing recovery through active self-management strategies such as education, meditation and exercise.

Speaking at Investment Magazine's Group Insurance Summit on Navigating pain: internal resilience and external support, Simonie Fox, AIAA’s National Wellbeing Manager, expressed her hope that other insurers and health practitioners would also begin integrating the latest pain science into case management.

 

“This is a really amazing opportunity for our industry,’’ Fox said. “We have an opportunity to support these customers who previously haven’t been able to recover. We’re literally helping people get their lives back and improving conditions in their return-to-work journey.”

 

AIAA currently has 409 claimants participating in the Pain Coach program, 172 of whom have completed five sessions so far. On average, participants have reduced their pain by 33 per cent and improved their function by 77 per cent.

 

This partnership with Pain Coach is one more way that AIAA is proud to be helping our customers live healthier, longer, better lives. As one claimant put it: “Thank you so much for helping me start my journey back to being myself again.”

 

You can read the full Pain Rehabilitation Research summary here.