Beyond Pain was established in 2008 as a chronic pain physiotherapy service. It has now grown to be a respected multidisciplinary comprising predominantly allied health professionals servicing clients with chronic Pain, fatigue, and mental illness. Beyond Pain has been a pioneer of 21st-century telehealth services and offers such services to its clients nationally. Beyond Pain prides itself on cultural diversity and celebrating individuals with lived experience. Beyond Pain provides pain, fatigue, and mental illness coaching and treatment programs across Australia and has repeatedly demonstrated that quality care can be accessed by those in regional and rural areas in a timely manner.

At Beyond Pain, they have a Purpose, Passion and Practice. Beyond Pain’s purpose is ‘To be significant, not just successful’, their Passion is to ‘Empower their clients to believe’, and their Practice is to ‘Humanise rehab with impact’.

Beyond Pain predominantly provides functional conditioning and work readiness coaching services in the Life Insurance sector and treatment services in compensable schemes (e.g. CTP, Comcare, Self- Insurance, NDIS etc.). They also have private clients and consult with organisations on injury prevention and well-being initiatives.

In 2018, it was increasingly becoming evident that traditional, clinic or hospital-based multidisciplinary pain programs were becoming overwhelmed with referrals, resulting in extended wait times for access; it was not uncommon to wait four to six months under the
public system and often longer in regional and rural areas. Due to this lack of access to and funding for a range of pain services, Deloitte’s paper “Cost of pain in Australia” (2019) reported some unfathomable statistics related to chronic Pain:

• 3.3 million Australians had chronic Pain, and 70% were of working age.
• Chronic Pain cost Australia almost $140 billion in 2018.

The report further advised that “doubling Australians’ access to multidisciplinary care to treat chronic Pain could be achieved with a $70 million per year investment. Beyond Pain found that greater access to multidisciplinary care could deliver $3.7 million in savings to the health system (net of intervention costs) while reducing absenteeism ($65 million) and improving well-being.

Beyond Pain’s initiative was to tackle these issues by providing a brief intervention-style pain coaching program as an “optional extra” to existing health services. Beyond Pain’s initiative is designed to provide a brief intervention pain coaching/work readiness strategy for a cohort of chronic pain clients when many of these programs had ceased. Additionally, Beyond Pain wants to create a cost-effective interdisciplinary pain coaching/work readiness program and deliver it 1:1 via Video conferencing, utilising allied health practitioners/coaches and teaching the key strategies associated with best practice pain management. Finally, the initiative will allow Australians to access quality pain coaching in the comfort and safety of their own home, irrespective of location, minimising wait times.

The Beyond Pain initiative aimed to provide a cost-effective program that covered the key modules addressing education, pacing, exercise, mindset strategies, sleep and flare-up management. The initiative aimed to provide 1:1 care so that the program can be tailored to an individual, followed by a goal-based approach for client-centred care and one which builds work readiness. The initiative is designed to be accessible to anyone with a computer or smart device.

The results of the initiative were majorly positive as there was a significant improvement in well-being and quality of life for most participants. These were also significant gains because it was a brief program/intervention over telehealth. From an industry perspective where the reported RTW rates for such a cohort is around 20%, this presented more than a doubling of this figure at a nominal cost and was achieved over a very short time (maximum 8-10 weeks). Further, participants had ongoing support through the contents of the Beyond Pain book that covered the information delivered during the program. From a business point of view, RTW rates doubled across the business, and there were greater reports of improvement in well-being. Given the succinct nature of the program, the coaches also found these seamless to deliver in a short period, rendering it sustainable.

Given Beyond Pain’s program is cheaper than traditional multidisciplinary programs, showed greater effectiveness and engagement being 1:1, the personal, social and economic saving is believed to be much larger. Therefore, Beyond Pain has demonstrated the ability to deliver a sustainable, cost-effective pain coaching program to address the restrictions of the pandemic and access due to geographical location without compromising quality.

For information about Beyond Pain visit beyondpain.com.au