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Health care providers must take a systematic approach to improving the quality of pain management. Doing so enables institutions to relieve patient suffering, improve clinical outcomes, lower costs, and meet accreditation standards. The article describes the essential steps that providers should follow when planning this process and reports the progress of one health care system in this regard.

More than 67,000 claims from a national database were analyzed to determine the relative costs of treating pediatric patients with asthma in physicians' offices, hospital outpatient departments, or emergency rooms. Billed charges and paid claims for these cases in emergency rooms average more than 5 times higher than in physician offices. Emergency treatment generally results from a failure of proper management and education in the primary care setting. Educational programs for pediatric patients with asthma and their families could save resources as well as reduce the trauma often associated with visits to the emergency room.