http://www.asahq.org/Newsletters/2002/12_02/jain.html
" In July 2002, U.S. News and World Report released its annual rankings of the “Best Hospitals in America.” In the report, readers learned where to receive the “best care” for various illnesses by specialty type. It is little surprise that there was no mention of where patients suffering from chronic pain can seek relief. As is well known to most pain management professionals, but known to few others, chronic pain remains one of the most undertreated, under-recognized and costly diseases in the world.
" Fortunately focused biomedical research has resulted in new and effective therapies that are the mainstay of modern pain management. Anesthesiologists today have a substantial arsenal with which to address pain problems ranging from powerful pharmacologic therapies to sophisticated, well-placed nerve blocks. The complex nature of these therapies necessitated the development of an entire subspecialty of the profession devoted to pain management. Despite the emergence of this subspecialty, the general public remains largely unaware of its existence — as evidenced by U.S. News and World Report’s omission of pain management as a separate category of care — and is unable to reap the benefits that sophisticated pain treatment offers. Sufferers of chronic pain usually become aware that there are physicians whose entire practice is dedicated to alleviating pain only when introduced to it by their primary care providers.
" Even so, many primary care physicians often fail to refer chronic pain patients to subspecialists. Pain specialists and patients report three key reasons for this referral failure: 1.) a professional unawareness among primary care providers of the potential treatments pain medicine professionals have to offer, 2.) a reluctance to refer a patients’ treatment out of one’s own control and 3.) fear of the addictive qualities of some pain medication prescribed by pain specialists.
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