SCOPE will enroll 250 primary care veterans with persistent (3 months or longer) musculoskeletal pain of moderate severity, and randomize them to either the stepped care intervention or usual care control group. The intervention will be based upon the empirically-validated Three-Component Model which in SCOPE will involve collaboration between the primary care physician, a nurse pain care manager, and a supervising physician pain specialist. SCOPE will involve a telemedicine approach coupling automated home-based symptom monitoring with telephone-based nurse care management. The intervention will consist of optimized analgesic management using a stepped care approach to drug selection, symptom monitoring, dose adjustment, and switching or adding medications. All subjects will undergo comprehensive outcome assessment at baseline, 1, 3, 6 and 12 months by interviewers blinded to treatment group. Our principal aim is to test whether SCOPE is more effective than usual care in reducing pain as measured by the Brief Pain Inventory. Secondarily, we will test the impact on other pain outcomes (e.g., severity, self-efficacy, use of self-management strategies), emotional functioning, health-related quality of life, and treatment satisfaction.