Angela Mailis, MD, MSc, FRCPC(PhysMed)
Medical Director, Comprehensive Pain Program,
Toronto Western Hospital, Toronto, ON.

The Comprehensive Pain Program (CPP) was founded in 1982 at the Toronto Western Hospital, a University of Toronto affiliated teaching hospital, as a product of the combined efforts of the chiefs of Physical Medicine, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Prior to its inception, the three departments offered a limited number of guaranteed beds for investigations of chronic pain patients. At that time, the program operated along the same lines as the Johns Hopkins pain program, which had been created a few years earlier. From the start, the CPP functioned as a multidisciplinary pain program involving Physical Medicine, Anesthesia, Psychiatry, Psychology, Neurosurgery and Allied Health (Occupational and Physical Therapy, Nursing, Social Services). Since 1990, the CPP has received funding from the Alternative Payment Program of the Ontario Ministry of Health (outside the traditional fee-for-service model), enabling it to provide unique clinical services, as well as to educate medical and allied health professionals and conduct extensive clinical research. Currently, the CPP is part of the Neuroscience group at the Toronto Western Hospital, together with programs like Epilepsy, Neurodegenerative, Neuromuscular and Neurovascular Diseases, Neuro-oncology, Neuro-opthalmology, Neuro-psychiatry, and the Spinal program.