Background: Chronic pain is prevalent and costly; cost-effective nonpharmacological approaches that reduce pain and improve patient functioning are needed.
Objective: Report the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER), compared with usual care, of cognitive behavioral therapy aimed at improving functioning and pain among patients with chronic pain on long-term opioid treatment.
Design: Economic evaluation conducted alongside a pragmatic cluster randomized trial.
Subjects: Adults with chronic pain on long-term opioid treatment (N=814).
Intervention: A cognitive behavioral therapy intervention teaching pain self-management skills in 12 weekly, 90-minute groups delivered by an interdisciplinary team (behaviorists, nurses) with additional support from physical therapists, and pharmacists.
Outcome measures: Cost per quality adjusted life year (QALY) gained, and cost per additional responder (≥30% improvement on standard scale assessment of Pain, Enjoyment, General Activity, and Sleep). Costs were estimated as-delivered, and replication.
Results: Per patient intervention replication costs were $2145 ($2574 as-delivered). Those costs were completely offset by lower medical care costs; inclusive of the intervention, total medical care over follow-up was $1841 lower for intervention patients. Intervention group patients also had greater QALY and responder gains than did controls. Supplemental analyses using pain-related medical care costs revealed ICERs of $35,000, and $53,000 per QALY (for replication, and as-delivered intervention costs, respectively); the ICER when excluding patients with outlier follow-up costs was $106,000.
Limitations: Limited to 1-year follow-up; identification of pain-related utilization potentially incomplete.
Conclusion: The intervention was the optimal choice at commonly accepted levels of willingness-to-pay for QALY gains; this finding was robust to sensitivity analyses.
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