Diving Deep with Bob Gold on Chronic Pain Management: Treating What You Can’t See with an Integrated Behavioral and Physical Approach

Chronic pain is a condition that affects more than 1.5 billion people globally, 100+ million of them Americans. Because chronic pain is complex in diagnosis and treatment, the physical, mental, and emotional impact on a patient’s daily life must be considered to effectively implement treatment that addresses the entire person, and not just their disease. The high incidence of social stigma and questioned validity of chronic pain lends to increased frustration for those suffering, creating a tough-to-treat patient population.

Treatment plans for chronic pain are typically designed uniformly, with the idea of treating the condition in the same way for every person, regardless of their environment of need or potential adherence to the prescribed plan. But how successful can this be if the person doesn’t believe they can achieve what is necessary to feel better, or their outlook doesn’t support the targeted result?

BehavioralRx®: An Integrated Approach Using CARBs

BehavioralRx® is an evidence-based science that considers the cognitive and emotional factors that influence a person’s receptiveness and amenability to change a habit, modify lifestyle, and follow oftentimes challenging direction – albeit with a healthy end goal.

BehavioralRx establishes a partnership with patients where they feel they can actively influence their outcome, building reciprocity, trust, and credibility throughout the course of their treatment. An involved patient who feels that they are being considered individually is likely to be more adherent, building resiliency and commitment to good health.

BehavioralRx uses a unique method called CARBs (Cognitive Action Response Behaviors) – a propriety artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning technique – to create human resiliency. The strategic foundation is a self-perception not as a victim, but as someone who can leverage positive outlook and actions, applying that towards a goal to influence a desired outcome.

CARBs are designed to establish a reciprocal relationship where the patient is responding to what is delivered to and requested of them, while interacting with a virtual concierge that is responding to their needs in kind. As a result, they directly impact a person’s personal belief that they can impact their own health, comfort, and quality of life. CARBs are intended to foster a more intimate and collaborative relationship with the patient.

Chronic condition treatment and management is a lifelong journey and needs to account for the unique factors that impact each individual.  The BehavioralRx science, including the CARB method, is a finely-tuned set of algorithms that are in harmony with a person’s own health and well-being journey – mentally, physically, and within their environment of need.

Aside from the improved care benefits of this new approach to treatment, the science of BehavioralRx represents a huge potential for financial savings due to individualized mass scalability at a dramatic reduction in cost. As opposed to a human care coordinator who can manage a finite number of cases concurrently and with the necessary attention to detail, BehavioralRx enables engagement with hundreds of millions of lives cost-effectively, while producing valuable electronic patient reported outcomes (ePRO) to drive personalized healthcare delivery and reduced adverse events.

To learn more about BehavioralRx and the CARB methodology, and its in-use application to help manage a chronic pain patient population, download our latest white paper.