Tradition Meets Innovation
Pain Medicine of the South brings East Tennessee residents relief
We’re able to treat pain pretty much anywhere in the body.” That’s the message Dr. Mark Jones wants to convey about Pain Medicine of the South, a practice started by his father, Dr. Donald E. Jones, which Mark joined in 2021. “Foot pain. Post-surgical pain. Facial pain, cancer pain, low back pain. We care for it all.”
The father and son physicians, their team of three nurse practitioners, and staff of 20 rely on a range of treatments to get the job done. “We run the gamut from conservative interventions like injections, all the way to spinal cord and peripheral nerve stimulators for back and joint pain to more rare types of chronic neuropathic syndromes.”
The practice also specializes in minimally invasive spinal surgeries which focus on replacing individual components of the spine rather than traditional open spine surgery. “It’s quick, it’s outpatient, and it avoids a lot of the adverse events that patients often run into down the road,” he says.
Mark earned his M.D. from Tulane University and completed a general surgery internship and residency in anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School. He completed his training in Manhattan with an interventional pain medicine fellowship at Cornell, the Hospital for Special Surgery, and Memorial Sloan Kettering. Don earned his M.D. from Baylor, with an anesthesiology residency from UT Houston and a fellowship at Harvard Medical School. On an ongoing basis, Mark and his team stay up on the latest treatments by conducting clinical trials and teaching at conferences around the world.
Looking ahead, the Joneses are opening a surgery center in Lenoir City by the beginning of 2025. Their goal, Mark says, is to bring other doctors on board and expand their reach in the region. Their dream, he adds, is to grow a center of excellence in pain medicine that contributes to research in the field. “I’d like to be a driving force in this field, and I think that’s the way to do it.”