Low back pain affects more than 600 million people worldwide and is the single leading cause of disability. A new study from Boston Medical Center (BMC), New England’s largest flagship hospital, suggests that the Optimizing Point-of-Care Pain Treatment Using Mindfulness (OPTIMUM) trial delivered an adapted group mindfulness program via primary care telemedicine to patients with chronic low back pain, resulting in sustained pain relief and improvements in patients’ daily lives. The survey results are JAMA Internal Medicine Highlights scalable non-pharmacological approaches to treating chronic pain.
Chronic back pain not only limits a person’s ability to walk, work, sleep, and socialize, but it can also negatively impact a person’s mental health and overall well-being. Back pain is also one of the most common reasons people visit their GP, but there are limited treatment options available on a daily basis. Drugs come with risks, surgery helps only some patients, and effective non-drug treatments can be difficult to access.
What our program does is give people real repeatable skills to respond to pain differently. Once patients acquire these skills, they seem to take them further and see continued improvement beyond the program. ”
Natalia Morone, MD, MS, lead author of the study and primary care and internal medicine clinician at BMC
Researchers tested a version of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) specifically for treating pain as a stressor. 451 participants from three states participated in 120-minute group sessions over eight weeks. Sessions were led by a trained mindfulness instructor and a primary care physician. Rather than referring patients to another program, the OPTIMUM trial had a clinician come into the room, giving all participants direct access to the doctor as an integrated part of the experience. Through gentle stretching exercises and mindfulness activities, participants learned to cope with pain rather than fight it, adapting their activities, and building awareness of how pain shapes their lives.
The researchers found that participants showed significant improvements in measures of pain and pain interference, the extent to which pain limits physical activity, and enjoyment of life on a scale of 0 to 10, and that improvements were maintained at 12-month follow-up.
This trial was designed to reach as many patients as possible. Participation criteria were intentionally broad to reflect real-world patient diversity, and the telehealth approach removed transportation and scheduling barriers that impede access to a structured program. This program model can also be billed as a group medical visit. This means you can be reimbursed through your existing payment structure in a scalable way.
“We have evidence-based guidelines, but the challenge is to bring those approaches to more people,” Dr. Morrone said. “If we can bring evidence-based treatments into primary care and create a model that health systems can sustain, we have a real opportunity to help far more people. That’s what drives this research, to deliver effective care to those who need it most.”
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Reference magazines:
morrone, nebraskaet al. (2026) Mindfulness-based group medical visits for patients with chronic low back pain: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA Internal Medicine. DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2026.2186. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2850976
