Why don’t we just measure pain with a dollar value, like everything else?
—Philadelphia Daily News. Four billion workdays a year are lost to pain, at a cost of 79 million dollars. Patients are now often asked to rate their pain and doctors are being asked to accept that rating at face value. "Many hospitals will now routinely chart pain the way they do a patient's vital signs. We're calling it 'the fifth vital sign.'"'
