Leveraging Existing EHR Communication Tools for Severe Pain Management: A Zero-Cost Innovation to Facilitate Timely Anesthesiology and Pain Service Consultation

Severe pain often goes untreated due to notification failures between nursing documentation and provider action. This delay is particularly detrimental for timely involvement of acute pain services and anesthesiology consultants. We describe a zero-cost innovation using the existing Epic Chat function. Nurses already message providers for critical values like low blood pressure. By standardizing this for pain scores ≥7/10, we create a direct notification channel to the covering provider or consulting pain service without new alerts or software. This leverages ingrained workflow to ensure timely pain management and facilitates reliable escalation. The protocol requires only a policy change, making it immediately deployable in any Epic-equipped facility to improve interdisciplinary pain care. Early experience demonstrates feasibility with consistent utilization and positive staff feedback, and formal evaluation of clinical outcomes is ongoing.