Can an Illinois patient see a pain doctor in Missouri?

Dr. Padda is licensed in Illinois and in Missouri. So a patient from Madison, St. Clair or Monroe County is treated by a physician the State of Illinois has licensed. The office just happens to sit one bridge west. Your right to a copy of your own medical records is federal, and it follows you across the river. Under the HIPAA right of access, a provider has to hand over your records, in the form you ask for, generally within 30 days. If the pain came from a job, the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission administers the claim and an injured Illinois worker may choose their own physician, subject to the two-choice chain-of-referral rule in 820 ILCS 305/8(a) unless the employer runs an approved preferred provider program. If it came from a crash, Illinois is an at-fault state with a general two-year limitations period for personal injury under 735 ILCS 5/13-202. None of that is legal advice; a question about your claim belongs with an attorney or the IWCC. In practice it means this: the doctor who examines you can be one you chose, on whichever side of the river he sits.

How do I get my medical records to a new pain clinic?

Will my Illinois insurance cover pain care in St. Louis?

A plan’s rules follow the plan, not the river. Whatever card you carry, we call the plan before your first visit and confirm what it covers, whether it wants a referral from your primary care physician, and whether it requires an authorization before a diagnostic block or a procedure. You are told what the plan said, in plain words, before you drive. Two things are said every time because they are true every time: an authorization is not a promise of payment, and a plan declining to cover a treatment is a decision about money, not evidence that the treatment does not work. If a service is one your plan will not cover, you hear it before it is done and you decide, in writing, whether to go ahead.

How long is the drive from the Metro East to the office?

Every time below assumes no traffic on the bridge. That is a fact about distance, not about a Friday afternoon. The office is off I-70 at Woodson Road, next to St. Louis Lambert International Airport. From any crossing the last leg is the same: get onto I-70 near the airport and take the Woodson exit.

• Northern Madison County. From Alton (about 30 minutes) and Godfrey (about 40), US-67 across the Clark Bridge, then south to I-270 and I-170 down to I-70. Wood River (about 30) and Bethalto (about 45) can go either way, Clark Bridge or I-255 to I-270 and the Chain of Rocks.
• Central Madison County. Edwardsville (about 40), Glen Carbon (about 35), Maryville and Collinsville (just under 40): I-270 west over the Chain of Rocks, then I-170 or Lindbergh to I-70. Granite City (about 25) is the same road, closer.
• Along I-70. From Troy (about 40) and Highland (about 55), I-70 west carries you over the Poplar Street Bridge and past downtown to the airport without leaving the interstate.
• St. Clair County. Belleville, Swansea, O’Fallon and Shiloh (all about 40) and Fairview Heights (about 35): I-64 west over the Poplar Street Bridge to I-170 north, then I-70 west one exit. East St. Louis is about 20 minutes by the same route.
• Monroe County. From Columbia (about 45), I-255 north over the Jefferson Barracks Bridge and around I-270 to I-70.

Winter changes the math. The river bridges ice before the roads on either side of them. The Poplar Street and Chain of Rocks approaches back up first. A January morning appointment from Highland deserves fifteen extra minutes. If you are stuck on the bridge, text the office from the passenger seat and the visit will wait for you. A late arrival for an appointment you drove forty miles for is not treated as a no-show.

What Anderson Hospital privileges do, and do not, mean

Dr. Padda holds full privileges at Anderson Hospital in Maryville in pain management, anesthesiology, surgery and addiction medicine. Here is what that does. Some procedures belong in an operating room, such as a spinal cord stimulator or peripheral nerve stimulator implant, an intrathecal pump or a nerve decompression. Those can be scheduled for you on the Illinois side, near home. The physician who diagnosed you does the procedure. It also means a working link with a hospital on your side of the river if you are ever admitted there. Here is what it does not do. It does not make Anderson an office of this practice. There is no consult room there, no first visit there and no walk-in there. Diagnostic blocks and image-guided procedures take place at 4499 Woodson Rd in St. Louis. Consults can also be scheduled at the Illinois office, 505 Buckeye Dr, Suite 200, in Troy. The hospital is where the plan goes when the plan needs an operating room.

Can pain management follow-up be done by telehealth?

Dr. Padda is licensed in Illinois. So a video visit with you sitting at home in Edwardsville or Belleville is a permitted visit. We use it for the parts of care that do not need hands. That means going over bloodwork, recording how a diagnostic block behaved hour by hour, adjusting a medication, and some of the behavioral work. The evidence for this is honest but thin, like most telehealth evidence. A 23-month audit of one pain clinic’s records, 565 patients in all, found comparable success rates for telemedicine and in-person follow-up. But the telemedicine patients had milder pain to begin with. A narrative review of pain-medicine telehealth after 2020 reached a similarly qualified conclusion. Audits are not randomized trials. Neither study could measure what a screen misses in a patient who is downplaying their pain. So the rule here is clinical, not technical. The exam, every procedure, and any new symptom are in person. A follow-up just to hear how the block went is a phone call, and you keep the forty minutes.

The drive home after a procedure

Procedures here are done with local anesthetic and without sedation, so the question is not whether you are awake but whether your leg works. A medial branch block or a facet injection leaves the legs alone, and most patients drive themselves home. A transforaminal epidural or a sympathetic block can numb a leg for hours, and a numb leg does not work a brake pedal on I-270. You will be told at booking which kind yours is. No sedation is used either way; after the second kind, if a leg is still numb, someone else drives until that wears off. The details are in driving home after a spine injection. Keep a written record of the hours after any block. That record, not the procedure, is what the second visit is about.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a referral from my Illinois doctor?

This practice does not require one. Some plans do, and we find out which when we check your benefits. Either way, the first hour runs the same, as described in what to expect.

Can my Illinois primary care physician order the MRI before I come?

Any doctor can order it, and having it done near home saves a trip. What matters is that the disc, not just the report, reaches us. The post your first visit, from Illinois lists exactly what to bring.

Can a procedure be done at Anderson Hospital instead of in St. Louis?

Operating-room procedures can be. Office procedures and diagnostic blocks are done at Woodson. A spinal cord stimulator implant, for example, can be scheduled in Maryville after the trial has shown it works.

Will you send notes back to my Illinois doctors?

With your signed release, the consult note and every procedure note go back to the doctor you name, in the format described for referring physicians. Your primary care doctor stays the center of your care. We are the part of it that works on the pain.

What if I was hurt at work in Illinois and my employer named a doctor?

Illinois law gives an injured worker a choice of physician within the chain-of-referral rule. An employer’s preferred provider program changes how that choice works. The practical steps, and where the legal questions go, are in injured at work.

What kind of doctor is best for pain management?

For pain that needs a diagnosis, look for a physician trained to examine, test and treat the source. Dr. Padda is an anesthesiologist and interventional pain physician. He is a diplomate in addiction medicine and in obesity medicine, and he is licensed in Illinois and Missouri. He holds full privileges at Anderson Hospital in Maryville in pain management, anesthesiology, surgery and addiction medicine.

Is there a pain management office on the Illinois side?

Yes. Consultations can be scheduled at the Illinois office, 505 Buckeye Dr, Suite 200, in Troy. Diagnostic blocks and image-guided procedures are done at 4499 Woodson Rd in St. Louis, off I-70 next to the airport. Anderson Hospital in Maryville is where the plan goes when it needs an operating room, not a place for first visits or walk-ins.

What should I bring to my first pain management appointment?

Bring your insurance card, the MRI or CT disc and its written report, and the last year of notes from the doctor who treated the pain. Include your medication list. Any note from a past injection or block matters most: what was done, what it did and how long it lasted. Send records ahead, then bring the disc anyway.

Can I drive myself home after a pain injection?

It depends on the injection. A medial branch block or a facet injection leaves the legs alone, and most patients drive themselves home. A transforaminal epidural or a sympathetic block can numb a leg for hours, and a numb leg cannot work a brake pedal. You are told at booking which kind yours is. No sedation is used either way; after the second kind, if a leg is still numb, someone else drives until that wears off.

Can I switch pain management doctors?

You can, at any point. Changing doctors needs neither the old office’s permission nor its referral, and the records request described above works the same when you make it in your own name. Telling the old office why you are leaving is optional; telling us what has already been tried is not, because a block that failed is as useful to the next plan as one that worked. If an opioid is part of what you take, leave that prescription with the doctor who writes it until a plan here is on paper: the first visit makes a diagnosis and neither takes over nor stops a prescription that day, as the opioid stewardship page explains. Learn more: why the result of a past block is worth chasing.

Related reading

• Your first visit, from Illinois
• What to expect on the first visit
• Pain management across the Metro East
• Injured at work
• After a car accident
• Driving home after a spine injection