June 18, 2018 – Pain Approach

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Anchor lead: Can a comprehensive approach keep pain under control but avoid narcotics? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Getting everyone on board to manage pain both achieves that objective and minimizes use of opioids. That’s according to Marie Hanna, a pain expert at Johns Hopkins who’s established a multidisciplinary pain clinic engaging physicians, massage therapists, acupuncturists, psychiatrists and patients to kick the opioid habit. Hanna says one fundamental is an actual contract with the patient.

Hanna: They sign a contract with us saying that they will not use drugs while they are getting prescriptions from us. And they will not do anything outside getting another prescription from another provider. I will tell them we will be randomly doing urine analysis and we tell them if you keep getting positive urine tox screens we are not going to be working with you, you are going to go find another provider. Once in a while we have a positive tox screen and we confront them and we tell them okay this is come, if it happens again you’re not going to come to this clinic anymore.  :31

Hanna says even those who have used opioids for years benefit. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.