On July 29, 2015, ASA joined 13 other pain medicine specialty societies* from the Multi-Society Pain Workgroup (MPW) in a letter to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), raising concerns with the recently published AHRQ Technology Assessment “Pain Management Injection Therapies for Low Back Pain.” While the MPW was originally formed to assist Medicare contractors in developing more consistent local coverage determinations through multi-society consensus recommendations, this represents another collaborative effort between the societies to maintain the high quality of care pain medicine physicians provide to patients. In the letter to AHRQ, the societies request that AHRQ revisit several aspects of the Technology Assessment to ensure that the best available evidence is addressed scientifically in order to provide an accurate assessment of the procedures reviewed.
AHRQ is a federal agency that produces evidence “to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable.”1 AHRQ...
