The diagnosis and treatment of chronic pain often falls on primary care providers. A new chronic pain management service aims to alleviate some of that workload.
Chronic pain, or persistent pain lasting more than three months, affects nearly 1 in 4 Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Supporting patients with chronic pain in the U.S. largely falls on primary care physicians – they are often the first solution to helping patients navigate pain and find relief.
With the significant volume of patients facing chronic pain, however, primary care physicians don’t always have the time or resources to fully care for patients’ ongoing treatment needs.
To address this, a new company formed in 2025 – known as Glimmer Health – supports primary care providers in managing the complexities of chronic pain and providing effective, comprehensive chronic pain management for patients.
“Chronic pain is the ongoing existence of pain for three or more months, and it differentiates from post-surgical pain in which someone has trauma or an accident, which is more episodic,” said Alissa Meade, Co-Founder and CEO of Glimmer Health, who has spent the last 10+ years leading early-stage venture-backed healthcare companies. Prior to that she was a consultant at McKinsey and a Vice President in healthcare investment banking. “At this moment, somewhere between 20% to 25% of adult Americans are suffering from chronic pain – indicating that it is an enormous, intractable, ubiquitous problem.” Indeed, nearly 70 million U.S. adults experience clinically significant chronic pain requiring them to seek treatment, often turning to their primary care physician first.
Low back pain and arthritis-related pain are the most frequent, and result in significant disability, lost time from work and unnecessary suffering, according to UPMC.
Managing chronic pain
Pain can arise from many causes, such as earlier episodes of pain or a musculoskeletal (MSK) incident from earlier in life – as well as injury, disease, or even unknown causes, according to the NIH.
“The most common chronic pain conditions are chronic low back pain and arthritis related pain, followed by nerve injury pain (such as diabetic peripheral neuropathy) and fibromyalgia,” said Ajay Wasan, M.D., M.Sc., Medical Director, Glimmer Health. Effective pain management requires a comprehensive, patient-centered and interprofessional approach that includes early evaluation, multimodal (pharmacological, non-pharmacological, and interventional) therapies and mental health screening.
“There often is no specific precursor to pain, and it can emerge from many different sources without a clear cause,” said Meade. “For pain, there is a very high correlation with other chronic conditions, but it certainly does not mean one causes the other.”
Despite the high number of Americans facing chronic pain, there is only one pain specialist (physicians that are boarded and specialized in treating pain) per every approximately 20,000 patients diagnosed with chronic pain, says Meade.
“In this country, we’ve largely left pain to be managed by primary care, despite the fact that nearly 90% of primary care providers indicate that they don’t feel like they have adequate training to longitudinally to manage chronic pain,” said Meade.
Primary care providers also have a lot on their plate – they already spend a relatively short amount of time with each patient, and they must also address a wide variety of comorbid conditions with their patients in limited time.
“Treating chronic pain takes significant time. Most primary care physicians have not received adequate training in the assessment and management of chronic pain,” said Dr. Wasan. “Along with the significant time demands they have taking care of potentially lethal diseases, such as cardiac disease and cancer, this all makes it less likely that chronic pain will be well-managed in primary care.”
Glimmer Health was created to bridge the disconnect between primary care providers and pain specialists – streamlining referrals and follow-ups, reducing between-visit communications and prescription refill management and freeing physicians and their staff to focus on direct patient care.
“We consistently hear from primary care providers that they don’t have the tools and capacity to manage chronic pain,” said Meade. “We developed Glimmer with the purpose of supporting primary care and partnering with them in order to help manage their patients’ chronic pain journey.”
Addressing chronic pain
Glimmer Health was built using UPMC’s proven pain care model to develop evidence-based multimodal personalized care plans for patients by streamlining access to treatments including medication management, longitudinal care teams, behavioral health support and holistic therapies.
“The thing about chronic pain is that it is not curable. Patients are managing it and trying multiple interventions over time – you can’t take steroidal injections and certain medications for pain management for the rest of your life,” said Meade. “We look holistically at the individual, providing them the specialization around pain management and ensuring it is the most appropriate intervention.”
Primary care providers often start with initial interventions to manage chronic pain including medications, physical therapy and injections.
Then, if needed, primary care providers refer patients to a specialist. For some patients, this is enough, but others may need to try multiple interventions.
“A common misconception is that treatment of chronic pain means medications only, and that chronic pain is just a symptom and not a disease that needs comprehensive care,” said Dr. Wasan.
Physicians treating chronic pain must also focus on addressing the root causes of a patient’s pain in order to move toward a long-term solution to its management.
“We are very proud of the fact that our clinical model is multimodal chronic pain care – this allows us to consider a much broader range of potential interventions for chronic pain – such as matching our patients with health coaches, behavioral health coaching and/or services, and engaging our patients with non-traditional interventions (acupuncture, aqua therapy, meditation, sleep discipline, etc.) where that makes sense,” said Meade.
Before the patient journey begins at Glimmer Health, the virtual service works with practices to get targeted data. This data is then run through an algorithm to form a curated list of patients who might be appropriate for its services based on a host of factors. The primary care provider reviews the list and advises Glimmer on appropriate patients. Then, Glimmer Health proactively does patient outreach.
“There are two ways we partner with practices,” said Meade. “First, with referrals either at the point of care like with any other specialist, or the primary care provider (PCP) can use Glimmer’s data driven approach to identify potential candidates across their panel and then Glimmer performs outreach. A second model is to have Glimmer bill incident to the primary care provider, in which case the existing primary care provider continues to be the supervising provider in charge of the patient’s chronic pain care, but our physician extenders deliver and assist with the care.”
Glimmer Health evaluates every patient to determine if their needs are appropriate for virtual only management. If not, they still review the care plan and provide alternative recommendations to the referring provider.
Glimmer Health is an entirely virtual service. When a patient is referred, a link for their consultation is sent to their phone, email and portal account. Patients then receive a full consultation, like a visit to any other specialist.
Once the initial consultation is complete, if necessary, patients are referred to the appropriate location for any labs, imaging or other in-person interventions. Documentation of these visits is then shared back with the patient’s primary care provider and Glimmer Health continues to have ongoing appointments with the patient, including physical health and behavioral health coaching if appropriate.
“Treatment for chronic pain means the delivery and prescribing of a wide variety different types of interventions for pain, such as non-opioid medications, injections, rehabilitation, mental health care and/or integrative medicine,” said Dr. Wasan.
The power of partnership
Glimmer Health is the second company built, funded and launched by the partnership between UPMC Enterprises and Redesign Health, which was formed to create and support innovative health care companies.
“I am so grateful to have two excellent capital and strategic partners, and I love that they’re very different,” said Meade. “UPMC is a large integrated delivery system, and we have the benefit of having access to their experts throughout the system to help us work through problems, test the value proposition and work directly with the health system as a proving ground as well. Redesign Health is a more traditional venture investor.”
These partnerships serve to assist Glimmer Health in extending the reach of primary care physicians by providing them with resources that seamlessly integrate with primary care teams.
“UPMC is unbeatable given the breadth and the depth of its healthcare resources,” said Meade. “Having the credibility of our clinical care pathway having been developed by a world renowned academic medical center like UPMC and having the clinicians who developed them as part of Glimmer Health has been an extraordinary asset to us.”
Glimmer Health regularly consults with patients to ensure they are adhering to their care plans and ensures that patients achieve reduced pain and pain relief. To measure the success of the patient care journey and pain reduction, Glimmer Health providers must ensure that they are enhancing patient’s overall wellbeing during their time in care.
“When it comes to patient outcomes, measuring pain reduction is not as simple as a diagnostic test – you can’t measure it like a patient’s A1C going down, for example,” said Meade. “Instead, it’s all about improving our patient’s quality of life, their functionality and their perception of their pain.”
By the numbers
1 in 4
Chronic pain, or persistent pain lasting more than three months, affects nearly 1 in 4 Americans.
70 million
Nearly 70 million U.S. adults experience clinically significant chronic pain requiring them to seek treatment, often turning to their primary care physician first.
20,000
Despite the high number of Americans facing chronic pain, there is only one pain specialist (physicians that are boarded and specialized in treating pain) per every approximately 20,000 patients diagnosed with chronic pain.
Key points
Chronic pain affects nearly one in four Americans and is primarily managed in primary care settings with limited time, training, and resources, creating a major gap in long term care delivery leading to fragmented care, delayed treatment, and poorer outcomes overall patients.
Glimmer Health, launched in 2025, supports primary care providers through a virtual multimodal model combining medications, behavioral health and integrative therapies while streamlining referrals and ongoing patient coordination.
The company partners with major health systems to validate care pathways and uses outcome measures focused on improved function, quality of life, and reduced pain rather than diagnostic markers alone.