The kick-off meeting for SIP Switzerland was held on the 20th of October 2020, with the main goal to establish a platform for discussions on the societal impact of pain. The first meeting of the Swiss SIP Platform was focused on ‘IMST’ (Interdisciplinary Multimodal Pain Therapy). The conference was jointly initiated by Dr. André Ljutow, Past President of the Swiss Pain Society (SPS) and Chief Physician of the Centre for Pain Medicine in Nottwil, Dr. Susanne Hartmann, Pain Centre St. Gallen and spokesperson of the working group Multimodal Pain Therapy of the SPS, and Mr. Peter Catlos from the health insurance association Curafutura, project manager for inpatient tariff structures. The aim of the conference was to take a holistic view of the topic of IMST, from a clinical and scientific point of view, as well as from a classification point of view.
The conference intended to define the following issues:
- Where do the difficulties lie in practice?
- How can we map the IMST better or more optimally in the systems in the future, and how can we reduce the administrative effort, not only for the insurers but also for the hospital?
SIP Switzerland have already mapped the next steps to take and, depending on the pandemic situation, plan to organise a new event in 2021.