By Pat Anson, Editor

Hospital patients will no longer be asked about the quality of their pain care under new rules released this week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for 2017.

Medicare uses a funding formula that rewards hospitals that provide good care and are rated highly in patient satisfaction surveys. Critics claimed that three questions in the survey asking patients about the quality of the pain care created a financial incentive for doctors to prescribe opioid pain medication to boost their hospital’s scores.

The three questions being dropped, which don’t even mention opioids, are as follows:

During this hospital stay, did you need medicine for pain?

During this hospital stay, how often was your pain well controlled?

During this hospital stay, how often did the hospital staff do everything they could to help you with your pain?

CMS said it was still developing and field testing alternative pain questions to replace the ones being eliminated.

“Today’s final rule would address physicians’ and other health care providers’ concerns that patient survey questions about pain management in the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program unduly influence prescribing practices," CMS said in a statement.

"While there is no empirical evidence of such an effect, we are finalizing the removal of the pain management dimension of the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) Survey… to eliminate any financial pressure clinicians may feel to overprescribe medications.”

The American Medical Association (AMA), one of the groups that lobbied CMS to drop the pain questions, applauded the move.

"CMS understands that these policies effect how physicians practice medicine and how patients receive treatment," said AMA President Andrew Gurman, MD, in a statement. "By listening to our concerns, CMS made clear that patient care was the top priority. We look forward to continuing to work with CMS to improve patient health and enhance access to affordable quality care."

CMS was under intense political pressure to drop the pain questions. Twenty-six U.S. senators sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell claiming “physicians may feel compelled to prescribe opioid pain relievers in order to improve hospital performance."

Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP), an anti-opioid activist group,also said the patient survey "fosters dangerous pain control practices."

But a top Medicare official disputed those claims in an article published in JAMA, saying “nothing in the survey suggests that opioids are a preferred way to control pain.”

Pain patients have long complained about the poor quality of their treatment in hospitals. In a survey of over 1,250 patients by Pain News Network and the International Pain Foundation, nine out of ten said patients should be asked about their pain care in hospital satisfaction surveys. Over half rated the quality of their pain treatment in hospitals as poor or very poor, and over 80 percent said hospital staffs are not adequately trained in pain management.