GREENFIELD — Hancock Regional Hospital will partner with an Ohio entity to bring a new pain management clinic to the hospital, intended to provide patients with a central destination where they can receive treatment for chronic pain.
“The biggest difference in this group is that it’s going to be a consolidated and managed program in one location,” said Craig Felty, chief nursing officer at Hancock Regional Hospital. The hospital’s new partner is Pain Management Group of Findlay, Ohio, whose website touts a strategy of partnering with hospitals to offer coordinated pain management treatment.
Until now, family and primary-care physicians in the Hancock Health network have individually taken on the task of treating chronic pain, including medication management. Felty said the physicians have done well with that responsibility, but because pain management is so time-consuming for doctors that patients can benefit substantially from seeing an expert.
Patients at the clinic will also be able to undergo pain management procedures, which might include injections of steroids or medications that can block pain from a specific nerve. Primary-care doctors have typically had to refer patients to outside specialists for these treatments.
Conditions that could be treated at the clinic will include multiple types of chronic pain, including arthritis, back and neck pain and persistent pain after surgery.
“Our goal is not always to take the pain away, because sometimes you just can’t do that,” Felty said. “Our goal is to give the patients the best quality of life.”
The physicians at the clinic will be employees of Pain Management Group, which operates such facilities in 52 hospitals in six states throughout the Midwest. All physicians in the clinic will be trained anesthesiologists. Hancock Regional also plans to hire at least three employees, including a clinic supervisor, a nurse and a front office staffer.
Pain Management Group is focused on providing a balanced approach to pain treatment that includes medication alongside other modalities like physical therapy, marketing specialist Ashley Spencer said.
Spencer said the approach takes into account the addictive potential of many pain medications and is focused on being “socially and medically responsible.”
Chronic pain management as a specialty has attracted an increasing amount of scrutiny in recent years due to growing public health concerns over opioid addiction. In 2017, Indiana health care providers wrote 74.2 opioid prescriptions for every 100 people, compared to the average U.S. rate of 58.7 prescriptions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of Indiana drug overdose deaths that year involved opioids.
Many studies have found that physicians prescribe more opioids than is necessary. Doctors have debated what approach to take with the drugs, which are often addictive but can be the only thing that helps some pain patients.
Felty said the key to effective treatment is finding a balance.
“The goal is always to get patients on the least amount of opioids possible to manage their pain,” Felty said. “Opioids are an important part of a pain management program, but it’s how the opioids are managed, really, that makes the difference.”
Felty said he feels Pain Management Group is a good fit with the culture of Hancock Regional.
“They have a definite patient focus, which is exactly what we are at Hancock,” Felty said. “We just felt like their culture and their approach to managing chronic pain patients fits right in with the way that we feel patients should be treated here at Hancock.”
The new clinic will be located in the Parkway Medical Center at 300 E. Boyd Ave., on Hancock Regional’s campus. It is expected to begin taking patients in mid-January.