HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY

Health Psychology Committee Report

Health Psychology Committee Report

Introduction

True Health Care Reform can examine all aspects of the health care system, including the education of all medical professionals, the role of integrative medicine and complementary therapies such as acupuncture, nutrition counseling, massage therapy and psychotherapy, just to name a few.  Experts should review the current system in which a patient's needs are determined, for instance how long the patient should remain in the hospital after a particular procedure, or what medicine is the best for a particular patient.  Currently many of these decisions are being made by insurance company regulations. (Jones, 2006)

Chronic Pain

Chronic pain—commonly defined as pain persisting longer than six months—affects an estimated 70 million Americans and is a tragically overlooked public health problem. The burden of chronic pain is greater than that of diabetes, heart disease or cancer combined. Ongoing pain can also undermine overall physical, psychological, and social wellbeing, and is a major cause of disability and costly health care utilization. Poorly assessed, unrelieved chronic pain can rob individuals and family members of a high quality life, and it profoundly burdens society as a whole. A 1998 National Institutes of Health (NIH) report concluded that just the economic toll of chronic pain may be estimated at $100 billion a year in the United States. It has increased significantly since then.

Most people in pain, including those with chronic symptoms, go to primary care providers to get relief. But current systems of care do not adequately train or support internists, family physicians and pediatricians, the other health care providers who provide primary care in meeting the challenge of treating pain as a chronic illness. Primary care providers often receive little training in the assessment and treatment of complex chronic pain conditions. They tend to work under conditions that permit little time with each patient and few options for specialist referrals. It is an unusual patient who has access to coordinated interdisciplinary therapy for ongoing pain symptoms.  (Portenoy, 2004)

Discussion

A program of reform should look at the health care system from every direction, including the education and accreditation of our medical professionals and facilities; whether the whole patient is being treated or just the symptoms of a disease, especially patients who live with chronic or disabling illnesses; the amount of federal funding for research into specific diseases and symptoms, such as chronic pain; how information on the prevalence and patterns of all illnesses is collected and used; and regardless of funding aspects, whether the accessibility of health care professionals is equitable in all areas of the country. (Green, 2003)

 There are many other areas of the health care system that should be reviewed, from access to and availability of care to the quality of care.  Other areas that need to be examined are how doctors relate to their patients with chronic conditions, do they know the impact these can have on a person's life or that of his family.  Research funding and the implementation of new research findings into practice ...