Access to Pain Care From Compensation Clinics: A Relational Coordination Perspective
Background: The Compensation and Pension (C&P) determination process is a potential gateway to accessing pain treatment in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). However, attitudes about C&P as a gateway and about collaboration with C&P clinics among VHA staff are unknown.
Methods: In preparation for an initiative to link veterans seeking compensation for musculoskeletal disorders to treatment, clinical and administrative staff from the 8 VHA medical centers in New England were invited to complete a relational coordination survey that examined how different workgroups collaborate (communication and relationships) to provide pain care to veterans. A subset of those staff also participated in a semistructured interview about pain treatment referral practices within their medical centers. VHA staff were from primary care, administration, pain management, and C&P teams.
Results: Eighty-three VHA staff were invited to complete the relational coordination survey; 66 completed the survey and 39 participated in the semistructured interview. Most C&P staff interviewed thought of the compensation examination as a forensic process and that C&P-based efforts to engage veterans might interfere with the examination or were not their responsibility. However, some examiners described their efforts to determine new veterans’ eligibility for VHA care and to connect them to specific treatments. VHA staff reported that there was little communication between the C&P team and other teams. The survey results supported this finding. The C&P group’s relational coordination composite scores were lower than any other workgroup.
Conclusion: Outreach to veterans at New England C&P clinics was inconsistent, and C&P teams rated low on a measure of coordination with workgroups involved in pain treatment. Compensation examinations appear to be underused opportunities to help veterans access treatment. C&P-based treatment engagement is feasible; it is being done by some Compensation teams.
Relational Coordination Survey
Relational coordination surveys were sent to 83 participants of whom 66 responded. Respondents were from
The relational coordination composite scores were lowest for C&P. This finding remained whether C&P staff surveys were included or removed from the C&P responses. As demonstrated by the 95% CI, when team members’ surveys were included, C&P scores (95% CI, 2.01-2.42) were significantly lower than the primary care (95% CI, 3.34-3.64) and pain management (95% CI, 3.61-3.96) groups. All the relational coordination composite scores were slightly lower when staff who described their own workgroup were removed (ie, respondents rated their own workgroups as having higher relational coordination than others did). Using the composite scores excluding same workgroup members, the composite scores of the C&P remained significantly lower than all 3 other workgroups (Table). Means values for each individual item in the C&P group were significantly less than all other group means for each item except for the question on responses to problems providing pain services (data not shown). On this item only, the mean C&P rating was > 3 (3.19), but this was still lower than the means of the primary care and pain management workgroups.
Further analyses were undertaken to understand the importance of stakeholders’ ratings of their own workgroup compared with ratings by others of that workgroup. A 1-way ANOVA of workgroup was conducted and displayed significant workgroup differences between member and nonmember relational coordination ratings on 3 of the 4 workgroup’s scores C&P (F = 5.75, 3, 62 df; P < .01) primary care (F = 4.30, 3, 62 df; P < .008) and pain management (F = 8.22, 3, 62 df; P < .001). Post hoc contrasts between the different workgroups doing the rating revealed: (1) significant differences in the assessment of the C&P workgroup between the C&P workgroup and both the primary care (P < .01) and pain management groups (P < .001) with C&P rating their own workgroup significantly higher; (2) a significant difference in the scoring of the primary care workgroup with the primary care group rating themselves significantly higher than the C&P group; and (3) significant differences in the scoring of the pain management workgroup with both pain management and primary care groups rating the pain management group significantly higher than the C&P group. The results were not substantially changed by removing the 18 respondents who identified themselves as being part of > 1 workgroup .
Discussion
Mixed methods revealed disparate viewpoints about the role of C&P in referring veterans to pain care services. Overall, C&P teams coordinated less with other workgroups than the other groups coordinated with each other, and the C&P clinics took only limited steps to engage veterans in VHA treatment. The relational coordination results appeared to be valid. The mean scores were near the middle of the relational coordination rating scale, with standard deviations indicating a range of responses. The lower relational coordination scores of the C&P group remained after removing stakeholders who were rating their own workgroup. Further support for the validity of the relational coordination survey results is that they were consistent with the reports of C&P clinic isolation in the semistructured interviews.
