Journal of clinical anesthesia
-
There is little knowledge of rural hospitals' roles in the care of chronic pain patients nationwide in the United States of America. We hypothesized that very few (≅5%) critical access hospitals provide patients with interventional pain procedures performed by pain medicine physicians. ⋯ A very small percentage of critical access hospitals list at their websites that they offer interventional pain services by pain medicine-trained physicians, and most clinicians listed as performing these procedures are not pain medicine certified. Increasing access to pain medicine physicians may present an opportunity for improved pain care in rural communities.