A RAPIDLY EXPANDING MULTI DISCIPLINARY PRACTICE IS ON A MISSION TO STREAMLINE MODERN PAIN MANAGEMENT

BY ERIK SCHONING PHOTOS BY ROBERT NUZZIE

In 1995, husband and wife Pasquale Pucciarelli and Eileen Nickel set out to launch their first chiropractic practice. While attending New York Chiropractic College, the New Jersey residents spent the hours traveling to Seneca Falls and back discussing the details of their future practice. Fast forward nearly 30 years, and that small practice has become the New Jersey Institute for Pain Relief, a multi-disciplinary pain management practice with patients across the state.

In 2018, Pucciarelli and Nickel met Jorge Méndez, MD, an anesthesia-trained, board-certified pain management physician. With Méndez on board, they were able to launch a true multi-disciplinary practice, offering a continuum of healthcare from noninvasive chiropractic adjustments to more comprehensive pain management or surgical solutions. To facilitate expansion, they began integrating existing practices into the Institute.

“We’re truly a group practice,” Pucciarelli said. “We have all the specialties from neurosurgery, where we focus on spine, to general orthopedics and pain management. We also have a general medical department, where we handle sports medicine. And then outside of that, we’ve kept our physical therapy and chiropractic departments. So we’re a true combination of conservative and advanced care. So you can come directly to us for surgical care, but if you want to go a more conservative route, you have those options, too. We bridge those gaps across the board.”

Advances in pain management over the last 25 years have been significant. When Pucciarelli and Nickel were first getting their practice off the ground, chiropractic care was still often set to the side when patients and their physicians were considering options for medical pain relief. Today, medical physicians and chiropractors are working together more closely than ever, and the Institute is a testament to that.

Seeking care at the New Jersey Institute for Pain Relief is by design a painless process. The Institute has all the advantages of a group practice a large provider base, centralized locations but it remains far more nimble than a major hospital system. T heir philosophy is to treat the patient as minimally as possible by whatever disciplines will be the most effective in each individual case.

“I love being a chiropractor, but if you go to a chiropractic practice and they don’t have everything in house, they have to refer you out,” Pucciarelli said. “Whereas if somebody walks into one of our facilities in a lot of acute pain, we’re either a phone call or a short walk away from getting them to a medical physician who can call in a medication. So that’s what I see as the benefit. The intersection of these multispecialties at the snap of a finger is truly the benefit for the patient.”

Pucciarelli is moving the Institute towards a hub system, where specialists will be available at centralized locations, such as the Institute’s main office in Cranford. As the group continues to integrate additional practices, each location will be like an outpost for the Institute, even if they offer only one or two types of care on-site. In any case, everything is integrated, so that each patient, no matter how minor their pain management needs, is stepping into a vast, highly connected network of care.

The Institute has grown rapidly in the past two years, expanding from two locations and a staff of ten to a staff of 87 spread over 12 offices. Pucciarelli attributes this meteoric growth to his staff, from the physicians to the administrative team who get everything done behind the scenes, along with a care-first philosophy that permeates everything the group does. “From our perspective, we have a very simple philosophy in our practice: patient care comes first,” Pucciarelli said.

Pain management has changed tremendously since 1995, from the rise, over prescription, and eventual regulation of medication to advances in spinal surgery and the integration of chiropractic into main stream medical treatment. The New Jersey Institute for Pain Relief is in a sense the logical culmination of all these trends, combining responsible pain management across disciplines. At the end of the day, there is no “right answer” for pain management; what works best is unique for each patient, whether it’s medication, non-invasive treatment, or surgery. By bringing together all these options under a single umbrella, Pucciarelli and his fellow providers are able to find the answer that serve each patient on an individual basis.

Looking forward, the goal for the next two years is for the Institute to double in size, with a plan for 25 locations across the state. Pucciarelli hopes to bring in additional pain and orthopedic practices to handle the increased volume, while sticking to his tried-and-true method of integrating additional existing chiropractic practices. The business is the true culmination of the dream conceived all those years ago in car rides back from upstate New York. Pain may be a fact of life, but Pucciarelli and Nickel, teamed with Mendez, a highly skilled pain specialist, have dedicated their lives to trying to ease it.

New Jersey Institute for Pain Relief

25 Commerce Dr Suite 100, Cranford

908.474.9444 / njifpr.com