[Pain treatment facilities in Germany. Ambulatory, day care and inpatient facilities for patients with chronic pain]

Abstract

Specialised pain treatment is available at inpatient, daycare and outpatient units at hospitals in Germany. A total of 579 hospitals in Germany offer at least one of the three pain treatment options. The main treatment involves outpatient care, but inpatient wards and daycare institutions have become more common. The type and number of pain treatment facilities differ regionally. Five of the 16 counties do not officially offer inpatient care at all, although pain treatment sites have been opened on the initiative of the hospitals themselves. Since specialised pain treatment is insufficiently defined by diagnosis (ICD-10) or procedures (OPS) in the German DRG system, it is not possible to recognise its availability when the facilities are not officially named. Pain treatment should be differentiated dependent on whether patients are treated within a single area of expertise or by specialised multi-professional pain facilities. At hospitals, systematic multimodal pain treatment is possible. Inpatient and daycare pain treatment programs are suitable when outpatient treatment has failed. An overview of the pain therapies offered is a prerequisite for their optimal use, the demonstration of their necessity and for their continued development throughout Germany. This study was planned and supervised by the commission for quality assurance of the German IASP chapter and was sponsored by the German IASP chapter.