Evaluation of the impact of a low back pain educational intervention on physicians' practice patterns and patients' outcomes.

This study was designed to evaluate the effects of an educational intervention on physicians' management of low back pain patients. The study universe composed of 64 providers employed by a large occupational health group, with 4411 LBP cases pretraining and 4665 cases posttraining selected from the organization's database. The control group had 151 providers with 8478 pretraining and 8876 posttraining cases. Results showed that practices of physicians who participated in the intervention strategy underwent significant changes between the two intervals. Specifically, the intervention group reduced the percentage of restricted work cases, reduced the percentage of lost-time cases for male patients and female patients (less than 40 years old), and shortened restricted workday duration and total case duration for female patients. These results provide early indication for the effectiveness of this type of educational intervention strategy.