Several important developments occurred in 2012-2013 for the Western Pain Program. In September, the Pain Management Program at St. Joseph’s Health Care London moved to a 3,326 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility on the third floor of the hospital. This includes procedure rooms, physician offices and a fluoroscopy suite dedicated to pain management. The fluoroscopy suite allows us to offer a number of fluoroscopically-guided procedures for intractable pain such as nerve root blocks, lumbar and cervical epidural steroid injections, and radiofrequency facet denervation for chronic back and neck pain.
St. Joseph’s Outpatient Pain Clinic receives over 5,000 patient visits per year and this number is growing. Another exciting event in 2012 was the launch of two websites: the Western Pain Medicine website and St. Joseph’s Pain Management Program website. The Western Pain Medicine website is our virtual voice in research and education, describing the faculty, research, resources, and our contributions to education including upcoming speaking events and conferences. There is also an extensive history of the Earl Russell Research Chair in Pain Management and Research.
A new triage system to streamline our referrals was developed in 2013. It was implemented with direction from Dr. Kate Ower and RN Cathy Rohfritsch. This new triage system has been very effective in reducing the average wait time for new patients to 3-6 months depending on the service required. Urgent consults, specifically complex Regional Pain Syndrome, can be seen within 2-3 weeks.
