LEWES — Sussex Pain Relief Center is looking to lease space in Lewes to support individuals with chronic pain and addictions.
Dr. Manonmani Antony spoke with the Health Resources Board Thursday, Nov. 21 before the group voted to approve the future expansion of services.
Antony founded the original Sussex Pain Relief Center in 2010 as a comprehensive interventional pain management center and her team now work out of several locations, including its main location in Georgetown which also houses Georgetown Aquacare and another office in Rehoboth Beach through spaced leased by Beebe Healthcare.
Although Antony, who is listed as a provider for both Beebe Healthcare and TidalHealth, has office space around Sussex County, she hopes to solve a lack of operating space needed for advanced procedures which she currently has to handle in Dover or risk sending patients to New Castle County or another state. Adding to that, Antony said that while their current practice is surrounded by three of Delaware’s largest nonprofit hospital systems – to include Beebe, TidalHealth and Bayhealth – none of them have a dedicated pain management practice.
“So we receive all of these patients all of the time,” Antony highlighted.
To address these shortcoming, she hopes to bring a new freestanding surgery center with a her pain management specialty to the Southern Delaware Medical Center in Lewes located at 17623 Shady Rd., Suite 105, a newer 32,960-square-foot space in total.
The space Antony has leased in the building comes in at 5,924 square feet on the first floor of the building and includes an operating room, procedure room, pre and post-operative care unit and waiting room.
“One thing that I think we have been seeing are more of these stand alones getting more tables. . . [because they have]. . . to depend on other hospitals, facilities, the travel distance, this just makes it more convenient for the patient and it seems to me that patients will be able to get scheduled and get the procedure they need at a faster pace than what is current,” board member Pam Price said during the meeting.
“And I can see you back before us in a year or two wanting to expand to have more operating places which would just show the need. I mean, clearly the need is there, especially as the population is aging. . . It’s practices like yours that need to expand and meet the needs of those patients,” she continued.
According to Antony, the new center would also work to help decrease opioid use around the state, citing that 60% of patients who have a pain management surgery in her care successfully stay off of opioids in the future.
“That’s quite a large percentage, in my opinion,” Price said. “Because sometimes we hear how they are still on opioids or, you know, if they go to a chiropractor, they’re still taking opioids or something like that. But 60%, that’s a large number coming off of opioids.”
After nearly an hour of discussion, the board approved the request for a Certificate of Public Review, allowing Antony and her team to move forward with the new freestanding pain management surgery center in the eastern side of Sussex County.
