JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Chronic pain is widespread and carries a heavy disease burden, and there is a lack of effective out-of-hospital pain management. As an emerging internet medical platform in China in recent years, internet hospital has been successfully applied to the management of chronic diseases, but there is no research to show the effect of internet hospital applied to the management of chronic pain outside the hospital.

Objective:

The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to explore the effectiveness of out-of-hospital management of chronic pain through internet hospitals and its advantages compared to traditional physical hospital visits.

Methods:

This study was a retrospective cohort study. All patients with chronic pain who had three or more visits online or offline between September 2021 and February 2023 were included. Information on the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), Morisky Medication Adherence Scale, medical satisfaction, medical costs, adverse drug reactions and other relevant items during the first and last patient visits were obtained through telephone follow-up.

Results:

122 people in the internet hospital group met the inclusion criteria, and 739 people in the physical hospital group met the inclusion criteria. Finally, 77 patients in each of the two groups were included in the analysis after propensity score matching. There was no significant difference in the improvement in quality of life (QOL) or medication adherence between the internet hospital group and the physical hospital group (P >.05), but the QOL (P <.001 for the internet hospital group and P=.001 for the physical hospital group) and medication adherence (P=.006 for the internet hospital group and P=.008 for the physical hospital group) of the two groups of patients improved after pain management. There were no significant differences in the pain relief rate (P=.25) or incidence of adverse reactions (P=0.60) between the 2 groups. The total cost (P <.001) and treatment-related cost (P <.001) of the physical hospital group were higher than those of the internet hospital group. In addition, the degree of satisfaction of the internet hospital group was higher than that of the physical hospital group (P=.01).

Conclusions:

Internet hospitals are an effective way of out-of-hospital chronic pain management, which can improve patients' QOL, improve patients' medication compliance, and reduce patients' medical costs, and can be used as one of the multimodal strategies for chronic pain self-management.