Rewriting the Story of Chronic Pain: A New Path to Relief and Hope

Chronic pain can take on a life of its own, gradually transforming the way a person lives, thinks and connects with the world. Sarah Goodpastor, MD, a board-certified internal medicine physician at one of the largest non-profit hospital systems in America, has seen firsthand how deeply chronic pain can affect her patients – not just physically, but emotionally and socially.

“I've seen people who stopped interacting with other people, even their family members,” said Dr. Goodpastor. “They weren’t sure how they would wake up in the morning, if they would even be able to comfortably get themselves to the restroom. They certainly weren’t feeling they could hold down a job and interact with coworkers.”

The Toll on Providers

Managing patients with chronic pain can take a toll on healthcare providers, not just because of the medical complexity, but also due to the emotional and relational challenges it brings. Patients can feel the medical system has failed them after years of treatments that provide little or no relief. Providers face the difficult task of managing fluctuating pain levels while avoiding overuse of medications, like narcotics or anti-inflammatories, which can carry serious long-term health risks.

“A lot of times when a person is in pain, they want an immediate fix. And I don't blame them because I've been in pain,” said Maria Housley-Kolter, PA-C, who works in the same health system as Dr. Goodpastor. “We need to be able to present other options for treating chronic pain that don’t involve escalating medications that could be detrimental to their health.”

A Partnership for Chronic Pain Management

Last year, Dr. Goodpastor and Housley-Kolter found a way to meet the unmet need for their chronic pain patients when their hospital system partnered with Lin Health. Lin offers clinically validated nervous system signaling techniques that are proven to reduce chronic pain.

To date, 25 providers in their practice have made 1,036 patient referrals to Lin’s virtual program, which provides patients with access to research-based, high-efficacy chronic pain recovery techniques. Each patient selects their dedicated coach, who establishes a therapeutic alliance via 3-4 video or phone calls per month, listening deeply to the patient’s pain experience and then working with them to customize a care plan based on the latest pain neuroscience. Patients can access this care in-the-moment from their phone or laptop, with unlimited messaging with their coach and broad insurance coverage.  

“When we consider chronic pain from a neuroplasticity perspective, an individual’s neurons can get hyper-fixed in a certain setup that perpetuates their pain,” Dr. Goodpastor explained. “Lin is using a system that is effective for breaking those malfunctioning pain signals. It changes the neural pathways in terms of coping with adverse events, whether it be pain or other things that come their way.”

Vicki’s Story of Skepticism and Hope

Housley-Kolter’s patient Vicki, struggled with fibromyalgia and chronic migraines after decades of physically demanding work. For more than 20 years, she endured waves of debilitating symptoms that made even everyday decisions – like what to eat or where to go – dependent on the potential for triggering pain. Despite seeking help from doctors, neurologists and countless tests, as well as trying physical therapy, acupuncture and yoga, Vicki found no lasting relief. In her words:

“It was a constant struggle. Sometimes I would have several migraines a week and fibromyalgia flare ups that were very debilitating. All they could do was give me medication – gabapentin for body pain and triptan for the migraines. There was really nothing they could do for the fibromyalgia.”

“Vicki had been coming to me for her annual physical exams,” said Housley-Kolter. “Her migraines were getting worse from year to year, where she was requiring more and more triptan to feel any relief. She told me chronic pain was ruining her life, so I referred her to Lin, and she signed up.”

“I’m a pretty skeptical person so I wondered if Lin was going to help me,” said Vicki. “But I was at the point where I didn’t know what else to do and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with these limitations. I was desperate and kind of frustrated. I have very active friends, and I didn’t want to always have to say ‘no’ to them. So, I put my skepticism aside, not totally, but I was willing to give it a try.”

Supporting Providers by Supporting Patients

Lin offers a unique program that meets the needs of patients like Vicki. It blends high-touch, personalized care led by a trained pain recovery coach with on-demand support, tools and resources that empower patients to play an active role in their treatment.

“When a patient starts experiencing pain, they can use Lin’s app to get support regardless of whether they are in their home, on vacation or someplace else,” said Housley-Kolter. “They know support is always there and having that safety net is important.”

Partnering with Lin has significantly eased the burden on the hospital system’s providers by ensuring their chronic pain patients receive consistent, expert support. As Dr. Goodpastor noted, any resource that truly helps patients also supports the care team by alleviating them of added work and emotional stress. She stated:

“Lin’s coordinators streamline the patient screening and referral processes so there is no extra burden on our care providers. The benefits extend beyond the administrative work to improvements in staff/patient interactions. Because patients are feeling better, our staff members are fielding fewer upset phone calls. It also reduces the conflict that tends to arise around chronic opioid use. All this makes it easier for healthcare providers to stay in the healthcare field.”

Vicki Today: Empowered in Her Fight Against Chronic Pain

As for Vicki, her engagement with Lin resulted in “almost instant success” with her pain “quite dramatically” reduced, in her words. Commenting on her experience, she stated:

“My headaches were drastically reduced right off the bat and my body pain lessened. Whereas before I was getting as many as four or five migraines a week, now I might begin to feel a migraine coming on once or twice a month, but I can pretty much nip it in the bud very quickly. I use imitrex for migraines just as needed and while I take gabapentin for pain, I have been slowly lessening the amount.”

“I saw Vicki about three months following her referral to Lin and she told me it was really working,” Housley-Kolter recalled. “A year later when she came in for her physical exam, she was using very little of her triptan prescription. She said it was lifechanging for her, which sent chills down me. It still does. I am so happy and of course, she is very happy. Now she comes in smiling, which she didn’t do before. And Vicki isn’t the only one. I have other patients who have experienced improvements as well.”

Vicki said she values Lin’s one-on-one coaching, which not only encourages her but also introduces new tools and techniques that help keep her moving forward in her recovery. She regularly uses the program’s care kits as well as coach-led video modules focused on specific topics like migraines and physical pain, which allow her to learn at her own pace and revisit content as needed. Among the most helpful Lin resources she’s found are the somatic tracking practices and safe space visualizations, which have been especially effective in easing the “what if” worries that accompany her chronic pain.

“It's something that I never believed could work,” said Vicki. “I still find myself sometimes wondering, ‘How is this even possible?’ The pain hasn’t gone away totally but as I continue to work on it, my quality of life improves. I don’t have to be constantly questioning whether I can do an activity. If I had been aware of something like this years ago, I would have done it in a heartbeat, and I think my life would have been hugely different. I would encourage others, no matter how skeptical, to give it a try.”

“It's beautiful to see patients who were heartbroken from failed treatments now truly empowered,” said Dr. Goodpastor. “For the first time, they can envision life without chronic pain and that lifts everything – mood, energy levels – and gives them a great amount of hope.”

Looking Ahead: A Holistic Vision for Pain Management

By equipping providers with effective tools and empowering patients with self-directed support that complements their current treatments, the partnership between the health system and Lin Health offers a promising path for chronic pain care – one that benefits everyone involved. Dr. Goodpastor spoke to her vision for a united front on chronic pain management, stating: “I envision a unified approach across our health system and region where our PCPs and specialists collaborate around the biopsychosocial model of pain. We should treat the whole person, not just one mechanism of pain. My hope is that any patient could walk into one of our health system’s practices and feel their chronic pain is being addressed holistically.”