3 Economic considerations in chronic pain

Chronic pain has a great economic impact on society and on the patient with chronic pain. The indirect costs of chronic pain, in the form of lost productivity and increased social security payments, are significantly higher than are the direct costs of the prevention, diagnosis and therapy of pain. The indirect costs in the family are particularly often under-estimated. It is proved that inpatient and outpatient treatment in multidisciplinary pain centres is equally effective. However, inpatient treatment is more expensive. Multi-disciplinary pain programmes increase the return-to-work rate significantly, but in pain therapy, there are economically relevant differences between different providers and different analgesic regimens. Further investigations are needed to uncover the costs and outcomes of different pain treatment strategies.