One of the ways I like to unwind is to watch HBO on my cellphone or tablet. Whether it’s Real Time, Last Week Tonight, Westworld, or Game of Thrones, I am captivated by HBO’s shows! One show, VICE – and its online companion, VICE News – has recently featured several stories that have to do with opioids and pain management. The stories do a great job of capturing the multi-faceted aspects of this issue. They also show how strict and unyielding policy solutions to current controversies in opioid-based pain management can make misery out of the lives of countless people.
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The Opioid Epidemic has forced providers and insurers to re-evaluate the way chronic pain is treated both short and long term. As a result, there has been a renewed interest in non-medical based treatments that restore pain patients, particularly injured workers, to health and optimal function. Chronic pain is a common presentation in work injury. Functional restoration is a non-medication based option that can restore patients with pain to higher function and return to work. True functional restoration includes Cognitive Based Therapy (CBT) and intensive physical therapy.
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News reports are replete with stories about the problems of opioid use disorder (OUD) and overdose deaths. The Healing Arts Network of New Hanover Regional Medical Center has a successful 20-year track record of managing pain with a multi-modal approach, including a variety of medications, {appropriate use of opioids, non-opioid analgesics, co-analgesic agents) and non-pharmacologic interventions. Many people may be interested in non-pharmacologic interventions but don’t know much about them, where to find practitioners or how to afford them.
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