[Wittesea]

A snip of the article-

STATES IMPROVE PAIN POLICIES, BUT BARRIERS REMAIN TO EFFECTIVE PAIN MANAGEMENT FOR CANCER AND OTHER CHRONIC DISEASES
New Report Evaluates States' Progress in Improving Pain Care

WASHINGTON, DC - September 27, 2006 - States are making steady progress in adopting effective policies that help people with pain to alleviate their suffering, according to a newly released national report card. However, there are still states with policies that prevent healthcare professionals from effectively alleviating the suffering of their patients.

The report, Achieving Balance in State Pain Policy: A Progress Report Card (Second Edition), was prepared by the University of Wisconsin Pain & Policy Studies Group (PPSG) and jointly funded by the nation's leading information and advocacy groups for people with cancer: the American Cancer Society, the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

PPSG researchers evaluated whether state pain policies and regulations enhance or impede pain management. In the report, each state is assigned a grade from 'A' to 'F' that reflects the effectiveness of its pain policy. PPSG also evaluated policies in place in 2000 and 2003 to determine what changes have been made over time. Results show continued momentum for positive policy change over the six-year evaluation period:

Read the full article at-
http://www.livestrong.org/site/apps/...y&auid=2121993

The complete reports, Achieving Balance in State Pain Policy: A Progress Report Card (Second Edition) and accompanying Achieving Balance in Federal and State Pain Policy: A Guide to Evaluation (Third Edition) are available at the University of Wisconsin's Pain and Policy Studies Group website:

http://www.painpolicy.wisc.edu/Achie...nce/index.html

** If you go to the above website and click on the "progress report card" you will get a PDF that has extensive information - including a list of states and what grade each state was given based on thier pain treatment policies.

It's fabulous information, and even though it was started as a way to look at cancer pain treatment, they do discuss non-cancer pain and they looked at the overall pain policies (not pain policies that are limited to cancer patients).

So it's good info for all chronic pain patients.

Liz