Five Ways Comprehensive Pain Management Centers Differ From Pill Mills

1. Board Certified or Fellowship Trained Doctors

2. More services than writing prescriptions

3. Patients make an appointment

4. Mostly Insured Patients

5. Use of Narcotic Agreements and other Surveillance Methods

Comprehensive pain centers are considerably different from "pill mills". Unfortunately the two get linked together in the public's mind. Pill mills are pain clinics that are predominantly in the singular business of providing narcotic prescriptions. Because the country is in the midst of a narcotic prescription epidemic, pill mills have received a bad rap, and deservedly so. Unfortunately though, legitimate pain centers have been dragged down into that public perception as well.

Pain management clinics frequently have board certified or fellowship trained physicians who have received extensive training in both interventional pain treatment along with medication management. This is typically vastly different from pill mills, who tend to use physicians without specific pain training.

Pill mills typically just write prescriptions. In contrast, pain management centers usually provide more services, such as interventional treatments, physical therapy and chiropractic.

At a pill mill, patients are often able to simply walk in rather than making appointments. At the more legitimate pain centers, however, patients need to call and make an appointment. Usually if it's a new appointment with a referral, medical records are received from the referring doctor's office.

At typical comprehensive pain management centers, the patients have medical insurance and utilize it for their care. Pill mills often work outside the insurance system. This means either having patients with no insurance paying cash, or having patients with insurance simply not using it.

Comprehensive pain management centers utilize pain narcotic agreements, typically called "pain contracts." These contracts help to ensure patients comply with such treatment protocols as pill counts, urine drug screening, and pharmacy board prescription monitoring.

These 3 treatment protocols are a fantastic trio that helps prevent diversion. It is well known that over 20% of patients will divert their pain medications, and that diversion spans all socioeconomic and ethnic groups. Pill mills may not have these various surveillance tactics, and it works to the detriment of preventing the rising epidemic of narcotic abuse in the US.

These factors together differentiate pill mills from comprehensive pain management centers. By combining all of these services and qualities, the more modern pain centers can actually help patients cut down their amount of narcotics being taken. This may stem the tide of narcotic abuse, and also help transfer some of the medications being written to those of the non-narcotic variety.