{"id":82030,"date":"2018-04-16T12:30:24","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=82030"},"modified":"2018-06-07T16:43:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-07T20:43:12","slug":"back-pain-treatment-costs-opioid-use-drop-when-patients-seek-immediate-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/back-pain-treatment-costs-opioid-use-drop-when-patients-seek-immediate-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Back Pain Treatment Costs, Opioid Use Drop When Patients Seek Immediate Care"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Low back pain affects nearly 70 million Americans and is considered the leading cause of disability in the United States. Costs associated with the condition exceed more than $100 billion each year.<\/p>\n<p>A research team led by the University of Central Florida has evaluated how the use of physical therapy to treat acute low back pain \u2015 and the timing of when treatment begins \u2015 impact the use and costs of health care.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers found that patients who started physical therapy within three days of receiving an acute low back pain diagnosis were less likely to use advanced imaging, specialist care and opioids than those who started physical therapy later.<\/p>\n<p>The team\u2019s findings were published online today in <em>Physical Therapy Journal, <\/em>the American Physical Therapy Association\u2019s publication.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_82054\" style=\"max-width: 626px;\" class=\"figure float-left\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"626\" height=\"273\" class=\"figure-img size-full img-fluid w-100 wp-image-82054\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/Liu-et-al.png\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/Liu-et-al.png 626w, https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/Liu-et-al-300x131.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/Liu-et-al-360x157.png 360w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 626px) 100vw, 626px\"><\/noscript><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"626\" height=\"273\" class=\"figure-img size-full img-fluid w-100 wp-image-82054 lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20626%20273%22%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt srcset=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20626%20273%22%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E 626w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 626px) 100vw, 626px\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/Liu-et-al.png 626w, https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/Liu-et-al-300x131.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/Liu-et-al-360x157.png 360w\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/Liu-et-al.png\"><figcaption class=\"figure-caption\">Xinliang Liu, William Hanney and Meghan Gabriel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cLow back pain is the cause of significant pain, disability and loss of productivity,\u201d said Xinliang Liu, who led the study as an assistant professor in the Department of Health Management and Informatics at UCF. \u201cDecisions about treatment have important implications for the health care industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Only a small percentage of patients with acute back pain are referred for physical therapy, according to Liu. And patients with physical therapy begin treatment at different times.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no consensus about when to refer patients for physical therapy,\u201d said William Hanney, a research team member and assistant professor of physical therapy at UCF. \u201cThe timing of physical therapy initiation remains controversial.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The researchers addressed this controversy by examining insurance claims records for 46,914 patients in New York who had a new onset of acute low back pain from 2009 to 2014. They followed each patient\u2019s records over one year starting with the date of diagnosis.<\/p>\n<p>Among patients who had physical therapy, those who started treatment within three days of being evaluated (\u201cimmediate\u201d treatment) were less likely to seek out more costly advanced imaging and specialist care than those who started physical therapy later.<\/p>\n<p>Patients with immediate treatment, about 27 percent, were the least likely to have emergency room visits. Nearly 33 percent of patients who had no physical therapy used emergency room services.<\/p>\n<p>Patients with immediate treatment also were the least likely to fill a prescription for opioid medication (44 percent), followed by patients receiving no physical therapy (48 percent), patients receiving therapy 4-14 days later (54 percent) or 15-28 days later (61 percent).<\/p>\n<p>The authors estimate that immediate referral to physical therapy for acute low back pain potentially could lead to a cost savings of more than $7 billion a year in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe impact of improving treatment of this condition is huge for all stakeholders \u2015 patients, providers, public and private payers and employers,\u201d said Carolyn Watts, the Richard M. Bracken chair and chairman for the Department of Health Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University, and a health services expert not associated with the study.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis study represents the kind of research [that] policy and other decision makers need to create incentives to achieve the results,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Other members of the research team are Michael Masaracchio from Long Island University, Morey Kolber from Nova Southeastern University, Mei Zhao from the University of North Florida, Aaron Spaulding from the Mayo Clinic, and Meghan Gabriel from UCF. The study was funded by a grant from the New York Physical Therapy Association.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Low back pain affects nearly 70 million Americans and is considered the leading cause of disability in the United States. Costs associated with the condition exceed more than $100 billion each year. A research team led by the University of Central Florida has evaluated how the use of physical therapy to treat acute low back pain \u2015 and the timing&hellip;","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":82031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[12,23],"tags":[9605,17099],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-82030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-research","tag-department-of-health-management-and-informatics","tag-william-hanney"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.3 (Yoast SEO v27.1.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Back Pain Treatment Costs, Opioid Use Drop w\/Immediate Care<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A research team led by the University of Central Florida has evaluated how the use of physical therapy to treat acute low back pain \u2015 and the timing of when treatment begins \u2015 impact the use and costs of health care.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/back-pain-treatment-costs-opioid-use-drop-when-patients-seek-immediate-care\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Back Pain Treatment Costs, Opioid Use Drop When Patients Seek Immediate Care\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A research team led by the University of Central Florida has evaluated how the use of physical therapy to treat acute low back pain \u2015 and the timing of when treatment begins \u2015 impact the use and costs of health care.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/back-pain-treatment-costs-opioid-use-drop-when-patients-seek-immediate-care\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"University of Central Florida News | UCF Today\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/UCF\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-04-16T16:30:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-06-07T20:43:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/iStock-471245067-1_1440x960.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1440\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"960\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gene Kruckemyer \u201973\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@UCF\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@UCF\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gene Kruckemyer \u201973\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/back-pain-treatment-costs-opioid-use-drop-when-patients-seek-immediate-care\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/back-pain-treatment-costs-opioid-use-drop-when-patients-seek-immediate-care\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Gene Kruckemyer \u201973\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9640ca0c84355d1c971ce4e83999b1cc\"},\"headline\":\"Back Pain Treatment Costs, Opioid Use Drop When Patients Seek Immediate Care\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-04-16T16:30:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-06-07T20:43:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/back-pain-treatment-costs-opioid-use-drop-when-patients-seek-immediate-care\/\"},\"wordCount\":563,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/back-pain-treatment-costs-opioid-use-drop-when-patients-seek-immediate-care\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/20\/files\/2018\/04\/iStock-471245067-1_1440x960.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Department of Health Management and Informatics\",\"William Hanney\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Health &amp; 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