The first assessment occurs when the referral letter or email is received. Patients are triaged according to the current triage policy, and appointments are made by return phone call either by a receptionist or a nurse practitioner. We do our best to get this done within a few days of the receipt of this referral.·In nearly all cases an appointment is made with one of the physicians in the clinic.
An initial appointment is usually made for 45 minutes. The more information that is collected prior to the consultation the less time required during the consultation for menial tasks such as data collection and the more time for explanation, discussion and question time.
In order to facilitate this MPCs ask that the patient fills out various questionnaires, some of which supply demographic information (name, age,address etc) and others specific information about the pain and general health.
These questionnaires can be filled out on a number of ways. The most expedient is on-line. After the appointment is made the confidential web-based link is sent to the patient via email. Deidentification starts then as a code number is used as the marker for the file. Privacy is considered to be of utmost importance!·Once completed the questionnaire is uploaded via a data bank warehouse, reidentified, and then stored into each person’s medical history. Additionally, when permission has been granted by an individual, that patient's specific data is again deidentified and entered into our research database so that we can derive information that includes an audit of how we are performing. We want to know if what we are doing is helpful, and even more importantly, we need to keep track of any harm we may be doing. We ask that our patients try to understand that this is fundamentally in the patients' interests, as best-practice medicine is only available with continuing re-evaluation of performance.·
Each patient then undergoes a comprehensive pain assessment by the physician. The patient is then provided, if possible,with a sophisticated assessment and management plan. The complexities of complex pain and the varieties of available management options make a simple explanation difficult. Patients may well require more than one consultation to be able to make an informed comment and decision about their problem.