Primary care physicians can prescribe pain medications but oftentimes when it gets to a certain dose or a certain frequency they may leave it up to us as professional pain management physicians to actually incorporate the medication management.
The reason for this is that high dose medication management or frequent medication management can lead to significant side effects as well as to the potential for addiction and dependence on the medications. We as pain management physicians are better trained to be able to manage the medications and to be able to look for somebody with risk factors or the red flags that may be associated with a dependency on the medications or an addiction to the medications.