Department of Anesthesiology Researchers Have Provided New Data on Opioid Crisis (Insurance Noncoverage of Interventional Pain Procedures: Paving the Road Toward the Second Prescription Opioid Crisis): Opioids – Opioid Crisis

2026 AUG 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Data detailed on opioid crisis have been presented. According to news reporting from the Department of Anesthesiology by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “David Popok,1 Michael E Schatman,1,2 Alan D Kaye,3 Scott G Pritzlaff,4 Claire Yuan51Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Care and Pain Medicine, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA; 2Department of Population Health - Division of Medical Ethics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA; 3Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center at Shreveport, Shreveport, LA, Tulane School of Medicine and LSU School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA, USA; 4Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, University of California - Davis, Sacramento, CA, USA; 5Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 1TN, UKCorrespondence: Michael E Schatman, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Care and Pain Medicine, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, USA, Tel +1 425-647-4880, Email Michael. Schatman@NYULangone.orgBackground: Related to a lack of a perceived fiduciary obligation, the health insurance industry has not historically been supportive of the efforts of providers who treat pain.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Department of Anesthesiology: “In the United States and several other nations, the early years of this millennium were marked by a prescription opioid crisis, resulting in abuse, addiction and hundreds of thousands of deaths. The temporal contiguity between payors’ withdrawal of support for interdisciplinary pain management and the onset of the prescription opioid crisis has been noted in the literature, as were payors’ global instruction to physicians to just prescribe medications. This is a perspective on health policy. With the explosion of interventional technology and techniques over the past decades, physicians have been able to provide more effective and certainly safer pain management to sufferers of chronic pain. However, over the past several years, payors’ willingness to reimburse for previously covered interventional treatments has waned, causing considerable suffering for patients and frustration for clinicians. These payors include the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as well as private insurers. Limitations: This is a perspective article with limited literature on the topic.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “At present, clinicians are being told to resort to medications, despite a dearth of novel, safe pharmacological agents appropriate for chronic pain management. The availability of restorative, behavioral and alternative medicine approaches is limited in terms of insurance reimbursement. Accordingly, noncoverage of interventional approaches to chronic pain management has the potential to indirectly result in another prescription opioid crisis, which neither our patients nor providers deserve.”

For more information on this research see: Insurance Noncoverage of Interventional Pain Procedures: Paving the Road Toward the Second Prescription Opioid Crisis. Journal of Pain Research, 2026,Volume 19(Issue 1):1-6. (Journal of Pain Research - http://www.dovepress.com/journal-of-pain-research-journal). The publisher for Journal of Pain Research is Dove Medical Press.

Our news editors report that more information may be obtained by contacting Popok D, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative Care & Pain Medicine. Additional authors for this research include Schatman ME, Kaye AD, Pritzlaff SG, Yuan C.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)