Ontario is considering limits on OHIP coverage for nerve block injections despite pushback from patients and clinics - Toronto Star

Nadia Lopez says weekly nerve block injections let her manage chronic pain. Her doctor has told her changes may be on way.

Nadia Lopez is photographed Wednesday outside the Pain Care Clinic in Caledonia, Ont., where she receives weekly lidocaine nerve block injections to manage chronic pain.

Every week for the past two years, Nadia Lopez has sat on an examination table, as a doctor has stuck 10 needles into her back and shoulders.

The shots are injections of lidocaine, a treatment that Lopez says has allowed her to overcome chronic pain enough to attend university, where she’s working toward her dream of becoming a high school teacher.

“Before I started this, I was unemployed, I was suffering a lot, I was not doing great mental health-wise,” said Lopez, 26. “I had some days where I was almost completely bedridden, and being able to get this treatment has really turned things around.”

She was devastated when her doctor told her the Ontario government is considering cuts to OHIP coverage that could sharply limit how often she can get injections, and force some pain care clinics to close. When she looked for details, she found only a campaign launched by clinics like hers to rally patients to “save pain clinics.”

Lopez is caught in a fraught corner of health care, where the easiest treatments to get for chronic pain — a complex physical and psychological condition — are not necessarily the ones backed by evidence.

Physicians working in community pain clinics say they’ve been told by their representative to a joint Ontario Medical Association and Health Ministry committee that discussions are underway to reduce public funding for the nerve blocks that many patients have come to rely on and they maintain helps them.

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