A new clinic at the University of New Mexico has gathered under one roof specialists in chronic pain and disorders of the brain and nervous system who previously were scattered across the Health Sciences Center campus.
A key advantage of the Clinical Neurosciences Center is something doctors call the “curb-side consult” – a quick, informal discussion between specialists about a patient with perplexing symptoms.
Dr. Joanna Katzman, a UNM neurologist, said she worked alone for years treating patients with chronic headaches. Today, she works side-by-side with Dr. Harvey Mallory, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician who also specializes in chronic pain management.
Before the new $7 million clinic opened in December, Mallory worked at an outpatient clinic about a half-mile from Katzman’s office at UNM Hospital.
“If I can talk with Harvey for five minutes, that can save a patient weeks of waiting for an appointment,” said Katzman, who has worked for eight years to form UNM’s first multidisciplinary pain clinic.
She also has on-site access to a variety of other specialists, including a physical therapist, a clinical pharmacist, a psychologist and a psychiatrist with addiction training.
The Clinical Neurosciences Center opened in the renovated floor of the former UNM Cancer Center, in the heart of the Health Sciences Center campus.
It houses UNM’s neurology and neurosurgery clinics, for both adults and children, in addition to the Pain Consultation and Treatment Center and a physical therapy clinic for spinal disorders and chronic pain.
The 31,000-square-foot center is about three times the size of UNM’s former neurology and neurosurgery clinics, said Dr. Howard Yonas, chairman of UNM’s Department of Neurosurgery.
The center offers a single location for patients with complex neurological disorders, including epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, stroke and spine disorders, he said.
“People coming in from a distance aren’t going to have to come back four and five times,” Yonas said. The one-stop clinic offers patients immediate access to dozens of specialists and helps them make the most of each visit, he said.
“We’ve set this up so patients can flow between the different groups and not have to wait three months to see one person and four months to see somebody else, the way it normally is done,” he said.
UNM’s decision to create a designated pain clinic acknowledges that chronic pain amounts to a crisis in U.S. health care that has remained under-recognized for too long, Katzman said.
“Pain brings 75 percent of Americans to a primary care doctor for an appointment that’s not” a wellness checkup, Katzman said. A UNM study also found that pain is a factor in 75 percent of visits to UNM’s emergency room, she said.
“If we can treat pain here in a comprehensive way and keep patients out of the emergency room, out of the hospital, discharge them quicker, get them better follow up, then we’re doing a better job of preventing problems down the road,” she said.
— This article appeared on page C01 of the Albuquerque Journal
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