Effect of Multidisciplinary Transitional Pain Service on Health Care Use and Costs Following Orthopedic Surgery.

Background: Opioid use disorder is a significant cause of morbidity, mortality, and health care costs. A transitional pain service (TPS) approach to perioperative pain management has been shown to reduce opioid use among patients undergoing orthopedic joint surgery. However, whether TPS also leads to lower health care use and costs is unknown.

Methods: We designed this study to estimate the effect of TPS implementation relative to standard care on health care use and associated costs of care following orthopedic surgery. We evaluated postoperative health care use and costs for patients who underwent orthopedic joint surgery at 6 US Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers (VAMCs) between 2018 and 2019 using difference-in-differences analysis. Patients enrolled in the TPS at the Salt Lake City VAMC were matched to control patients undergoing the same surgeries at 5 different VAMCs without a TPS. We stratified patients based on history of preoperative opioid use into chronic opioid use (COU) and nonopioid use (NOU) groups and analyzed them separately.

Results: For NOU patients, TPS was associated with a mean increase in the number of outpatient visits (6.9 visits; P < .001), no change in outpatient costs, and a mean decrease in inpatient costs (-$12,170; P = .02) during the 1-year follow-up period. TPS was not found to increase health care use or costs for COU patients.

Conclusions: Although TPS led to an increase in outpatient visits for NOU patients, there was no increase in outpatient costs and a decrease in inpatient costs after orthopedic surgery. Further, there was no added cost for managing COU patients with a TPS. These findings suggest that TPS can be implemented to reduce opioid use following joint surgery without increasing health care costs.