People with chronic pain face added barriers when accessing medical care.
Spending an hour or more sitting in a car can worsen pain. That's on top of the time, money, and effort involved in traveling for care.
UPMC Chronic Pain Telemedicine reduces in-person medical visits for people with pain. You can access our experts to help manage your pain from your home.
Studies show that the best way to treat pain is with more than one approach. At UPMC, we treat pain in a holistic way.
This includes:
If you prefer remote care, we provide pain medicine services through video visits when possible.
You may need to travel for some appointments – like in-person injections. But telemedicine works well for other procedures, such as pain assessments or follow-ups.
Since the same doctors offer both online and in-person visits, you receive seamless pain care.
Here are some of the chronic pain services we offer through virtual care at UPMC:
Lumbar degenerative disk disease is one of the most common reasons for low back pain. This occurs when the cartilage in one or more disks in the spine breaks, due to the effects of aging.
The disks are less able to absorb pressure on the spine, causing:
During a video visit, the doctor will ask you about your symptoms. If they suspect lumbar degenerative disk disease, you'll need imaging tests to confirm the diagnosis.
Or, if you've already had an MRI or other scan, the doctor can view those results.
At UPMC, we offer a many-sided – rather than a piecemeal – approach to treatment. This helps ensure your recovery is thorough and long-lasting.
Our treatment plan for lumbar disk disease includes:
We follow you using virtual care for months, and often years, to be sure your treatment plan is working for you.
Many people we see with chronic pain travel an hour or more to access our care.
Our chronic pain telemedicine service helps to reduce these trips, offering the following benefits:
We see people with chronic pain (or pain that has lasted more than three months).
Chronic pain conditions we treat include:
Before your appointment, a UPMC chronic pain team member will call you. They'll ask you about your medical history, including past surgeries, treatments, and diagnoses.
For your video appointment, you'll meet with a nurse practitioner or physician assistant, and a pain medicine doctor. They will ask you detailed questions about your pain and discuss the cause, or suspected cause, with you.
Our telehealth team may decide to refer you for a test, like an MRI.
Or we may have enough information to create your treatment plan. This often involves medicines or shots and non-medical treatments, like physical therapy.
If you need a physical exam to confirm a diagnosis, we'll book an in-person visit when it works best for you.
We will continue to follow you to make sure your treatment plan is working or make any changes to it. If you have questions later, you can call our office any time for a phone or video follow-up visit.
As a major referral hospital, UPMC accepts most major insurance plans.
We suggest that you contact your health insurance company to confirm your plan covers our telemedicine services.
Visit the UPMC Find A Doctor website to view pain medicine doctors and schedule a video visit. Or call 412-432-1760.
Your health information, right at your fingertips. Select MyUPMC to access your UPMC health information. For patients of UPMC-affiliated doctors in Central Pa, select UPMC Central Pa Portal. Patients of UPMC Cole should select the UPMC Cole Connect Patient Portal.
The portal for all UPMC patients EXCEPT those in Central Pa.
The portal for UPMC patients in Central Pa.
The portal for UPMC Cole patients receiving inpatient care.
