How Can Clinics Help Fight the Opioid Epidemic?

There is no doubt our country is fighting an opioid epidemic. Over 10 million people aged 12 and older misused opioids in 2019, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Only a small percentage of those people used illegal drugs, it was primarily misuse of prescription medications. When people are in pain and they go to the doctor, many are prescribed opioids for that pain. The problem is, if the underlying issues causing the pain are not addressed, then those people will continue to take the pain medication and eventually it stops working. This leads to them taking more than prescribed, and that creates additional problems. There is a solution to the opioid epidemic, and Genesis Medical Management feels that clinics are at the forefront of helping to address the problem.

Pain can be debilitating. It can impact everything in your life, including your ability to function (both mentally and physically). Pain can limit your mobility, impact your reasoning, and make your life completely unbearable. As a result, people are willing to do most anything to eliminate pain. Their first option is typically to seek medical help. Unfortunately, if that medical help chooses to provide pain medication without addressing the cause of the pain, they have simply created a new problem and added to the opioid epidemic. This happens because of a variety of reasons. Many doctors simply count on the odds that a lot of pain is temporary and will resolve itself. However, pain is not a symptom that should be treated so cavalierly. Pain is the body’s way of telling you that something is wrong. Therefore, doctors must thoroughly examine that body to find the cause of the pain, not treat the pain as its own condition.

Clinics are the go-to healthcare provider for people within their own neighborhoods. They are a trusted source of medical care, and as a result they have an obligation to help their patients and ensure that they are not creating more problems for their patients as part of their treatment. Pain clinics and other medical organizations that treat pain have a duty to ensure they use responsible pain management as part of their treatment protocol. Genesis Medical Management recognizes that Pain Stop Clinics takes this responsibility seriously.

At Pain Stop Clinics they feel that properly addressing the underlying issue causing an individual’s pain will help to resolve that pain long-term, which in turn eliminates the need for pain medication. This approach takes a proper and thorough medical examination, review of a patient’s medical records, and developing a responsible, multi-dimensional treatment plan. This treatment plan may include chiropractic therapies, physical therapies, medical injections, interventional pain procedures, surgical procedures, and other treatment options, including pain medication. However, if pain medication is used, it is simply as one small part of a muti-dimensional plan. Pain medication can help reduce the pain enough to allow the individual to complete various therapy treatments. Eventually, it is those other treatments that will eliminate the pain because the problem will have been addressed and resolved.

Opioids can be effectively used to treat pain if they are part of a bigger picture. Simply expecting pain medication to provide long-term relief from pain is not an option; pain is a symptom, not a condition. Treating the cause of the symptom is the only responsible way to address pain. Genesis Medical Management recommends that all medical providers provide responsible pain management by addressing the underlying cause of their patients’ pain, the way Pain Stop Clinics do. This is how clinics can help fight against the opioid epidemic that is sweeping across our country.