Use of Complementary and Integrated Health: A Retrospective Analysis of U.S. Veterans with Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain Nationally.
Author: Taylor SL1,2, Herman PM3, Marshall NJ4, Zeng Q5,6, Yuan A1, Chu K1, Shao Y5, Morioka C7, Lorenz KA4
Affiliation:
11 Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation , Implementation and Policy, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA.
22 Department of Health Policy and Management, UCLA School of Public Health , Los Angeles, CA.
33 RAND Corporation , Santa Monica, CA.
44 Center for the Study of Innovation to Implementation , VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, CA.
55 Center for Health and Aging , VA Washington DC Health Care System, Washington, DC.
66 Biomedical Informatics Center, George Washington University , Washington, DC.
77 Informatics Department, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System , Los Angeles, CA.
Conference/Journal: J Altern Complement Med.
Date published: 2018 Oct 12
Other:
Special Notes: doi: 10.1089/acm.2018.0276. [Epub ahead of print] , Word Count: 296
OBJECTIVE: To partially address the opioid crisis, some complementary and integrative health (CIH) therapies are now recommended for chronic musculoskeletal pain, a common condition presented in primary care. As such, healthcare systems are increasingly offering CIH therapies, and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the nation's largest integrated healthcare system, has been at the forefront of this movement. However, little is known about the uptake of CIH among patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. As such, we conducted the first study of the use of a variety of nonherbal CIH therapies among a large patient population having chronic musculoskeletal pain.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: We examined the frequency and predictors of CIH therapy use using administrative data for a large retrospective cohort of younger veterans with chronic musculoskeletal pain using the VHA between 2010 and 2013 (n = 530,216). We conducted a 2-year effort to determine use of nine types of CIH by using both natural language processing data mining methods and administrative and CPT4 codes. We defined chronic musculoskeletal pain as: (1) having 2+ visits with musculoskeletal diagnosis codes likely to represent chronic pain separated by 30-365 days or (2) 2+ visits with musculoskeletal diagnosis codes within 90 days and with 2+ numeric rating scale pain scores ≥4 at 2+ visits within 90 days.
RESULTS: More than a quarter (27%) of younger veterans with chronic musculoskeletal pain used any CIH therapy, 15% used meditation, 7% yoga, 6% acupuncture, 5% chiropractic, 4% guided imagery, 3% biofeedback, 2% t'ai chi, 2% massage, and 0.2% hypnosis. Use of any CIH therapy was more likely among women, single patients, patients with three of the six pain conditions, or patients with any of the six pain comorbid conditions.
CONCLUSIONS: Patients appear willing to use CIH approaches, given that 27% used some type. However, low rates of some specific CIH suggest the potential to augment CIH use.
KEYWORDS: alternative medicine; chronic pain; musculoskeletal pain; veterans
PMID: 30312109 DOI: 10.1089/acm.2018.0276
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