One of the biggest challenges with using a solitary approach such as pharmacotherapy, including opioid therapy, for the patients with pain, is that chronic pain is best treated through a multimodal approach. Pain affects the whole person. Patients and practitioners need to learn techniques to adapt to and manage the pain, not just take it away temporarily. There is a push to teach active self management strategies, such as sleep restoration, pacing, conquering worry and anxiety, and how to minimize depression in the face of pain.

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.

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.